Headrests from Southern Africa - The architecture of sleep presents the subject of southern African headrests in a fascinating new light. The book, richly illustrated - often with in situ photographs, offers unique historical and personal information collected from many of the original owners and carvers of the headrests. So, for the first time African headrests are brought to life with detailed information and the stories of their creation, ownership, use and significance. The 438 headrests from the collections of Bruce Goodall from Cape Town and Frederic Zimer from Paris are presented according to 3 geographical areas: KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo (where the Ntwane people live) and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland). Since 2003, Goodall has made numerous field trips collecting, as well as interviewing and photographing the owners and carvers of headrests. In 2017, Goodall's collection grew substantially with the purchase of a comprehensive collection of headrests from the Msinga area of KwaZulu-Natal. This collection had been assembled and meticulously documented by the late Anglican priest Clive Newman and his friend and assistant, Mavis Duma, between the late 1980s and the mid-2000s. The Zimer collection has been built up since the 1990s through his many travels in Africa, and his acquisitions from collectors and African art dealers around the world. This publication not only offers insight into the personal and historical dimensions of this important southern African tradition through the text written about the headrests and their owners by Bruce Goodall, but includes essays by Newman, Nel and Leibhammer and a text about collecting by Duma. Together these facilitate a penetrating understanding of these valued items as well as a respectful appreciation of the cultures and individuals who made and used them.

Covering 40 years of South African artist William Kentridge's (born 1955) internationally acclaimed production in drawing, stop-frame animation, video, prints, sculpture, tapestry and large-scale installation, Why Should I Hesitate stands as a definitive statement on his vast oeuvre. This deluxe production, published in an edition of 1,800 copies, is comprised of two slipcased volumes with a unique print in lapis lazuli.

The title references Kentridge’s primary practice of drawing and how this core activity informs and enables his studio practice. It also references the impact of individual action on history and the reverse―how history shapes the contemporary and the future―and serves as a commentary on various shifting hegemonies of power politics, economies, language and the authority to narrate history.

The two volumes showcase two complementary exhibitions, held at the Norval Foundation and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town, which together form the largest, most comprehensive presentation of Kentridge’s work, anywhere, ever.

Why Should I Hesitate?: Sculpture, at Norval Foundation, is the first exhibition to address Kentridge’s output as a sculptor, from the props used in his operas to his recent, monumental bronze sculptures, premiering as part of this exhibition. As an extension of Why Should I Hesitate?: Sculpture, the publication includes a visual index of his sculptural practice; a photo essay charting the development of his large Lexicon sculptures; and a comprehensive essay by Columbia University’s Dr. David Freedberg, which locates Kentridge’s work within several key artistic movements.

Held at Zeitz MOCAA, Why Should I Hesitate?: Putting Drawings to Work spans more than forty years of art making, with a focus on Kentridge’s studio practice. The accompanying publication includes essays, conversations, a lecture, and a meticulous timeline of the history of 20th-century South Africa, interwoven with a chronology of the artist’s life, work and thinking over the decades