This is a rare opportunity to virtually travel the world to Johannesburg, Los Angeles, and Chicago and visit the studios of three Whitechapel Artist alumni with Whitechapel curators.

The winning bidder, plus three guests, will enjoy exclusive studio visits with William Kentridge, Tala Madani and Michael Rakowitz in conversation with Iwona Blazwick or Lydia Yee. The winning bidder will be able to ask questions, hear directly from the artists about what they are working on, and get an intimate insight into the spaces where they develop and create their internationally recognised art.

Terms and Conditions:
The studio visits will take place on Zoom between April 2021 and January 2022, to be arranged at a mutually convenient time. The date and time of each visit is at the discretion of the artists and their availability. No more than 4 people may attend; the Zoom meetings will be private and sent once the date and time of each studio visit is confirmed. The Zoom links must not be shared. A percentage of this sale will go to the Centre for the Less Good Idea, South Africa.

About the Artists:
William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa where he currently lives and works. Often drawing from socio-political conditions in post-apartheid South Africa, William Kentridge’s work takes is expressionist in nature. For Kentridge, the process of recording history is constructed from reconfigured fragments to arrive at a provisional understanding of the past—this act of recording, dismembering and reordering crosses over into an essential activity of the studio. His work spans a diverse range of artistic media such as drawing, performance, film, printmaking, sculpture and painting.

His exhibition Thick Time at Whitechapel Gallery in 2016 travelled to the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2017), and The Whitworth, Manchester (2018).

Tala Madani was born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran and lives and works in Los Angeles. Madani’s painted canvases and animations conjure up enigmatic scenes, often populated by anonymous, bald men. Masculinity is deconstructed in Madani’s work. She breaks down preconceived roles and stereotypes to explore power structures and the construction of male identity. The men in her painting and animations enact pitiable, compulsive violations on their flabby, ageing bodies. Humour punctuates the tension of these awkward situations, but laughter is never a simple release in Madani’s work: comedy and humiliation uncomfortably coexist.

Madani was one of 10 artists included in Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millenium in 2019.


Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973, New York) is an artist living and working in Chicago. Sculptor, detective and occasional chef, he takes his cue from historic buildings and artefacts to create enthralling environments. He had his first European survey show at Whitechapel Gallery in 2019 that toured to Castello di Rivoli, Turin and the Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. He is Professor at Chicago’s Northwestern University. His work has been exhibited worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1 MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale and Transmediale 05. He has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern (London), Junstraum (Innsbruck) and MCA (Chicago). Rakowitz won the 2018 Fourth Plinth commission for London’s Trafalgar Square and is presented his sculpture The invisible enemy should not exist (2007 – ongoing), in 2020. In 2020, he was the recipient of the Nasher Prize for Sculpture.