Triumphs and Laments

https://www.jillianrossprint.com/tandl

In 2023 William Kentridge proposed a collaboration for a print, in the form of a leporello, based on his ephemeral monumental frieze, Triumphs and Laments (2016), which was stencilled on a wall that runs along the Tiber River in Rome.

This accordion-fold photopolymer gravure is made from 30 photopolymer plates printed onto 22 sheets of Arches, Cover White, 300gsm, folded and glued with acid-free polyvinyl acetate to form four signatures. The folded sections and signatures are of irregular lengths. On occasion parts of the printed images are repeated to produce an intentional stuttering effect. Once assembled, this leporello displays the frieze 

Triumphs and Laments was a frieze made for the walls of the Lungotevere in Rome between the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Mazzini, a distance of some 500 metres. The procession of fifty-one figures was drawn from the history of the city: from Remus to Pasolini, from Caesar’s Quadruple Triumph to Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, from the campaigns of Marcus Aurelius beyond the Danube to mourners at a funeral for Eritreans who died at sea trying to reach Italy in 2013.

The figures were originally drawn in charcoal on journal paper and translated through digital mapping into ten-metre-high stencils used to make the frieze. Pollution and biological growth, which darkened the stones of the walls containing the Tiber River, were washed away around the stencils to reveal the figures.

Triumphs and Laments was unveiled on the 21st of April 2016, 2769, years to the day since the founding of Rome in 753 B.C.

The series of photogravures which make up this leporello are based on images taken by photographer Sebastiano Luciano to document the frieze in 2016.

Triumphs and Laments was conceived as an ephemeral project. After the installation, over the course of more than five years, the frieze disappeared into the patina of the stone wall. This leporello stands as the record of the 500-metre procession along the Tiber River.

Publisher: Jillian Ross Print (JRP)

Printed by Master Printer Jillian Ross at JRP, Saskatoon, Canada

Editioning printers: Jillian Ross, Hannah F. Duke, Marcel Houston-McIntosh 

Plate creation: Brendan Copestake

Photo editing: Walker Blackwell, Brendan Copestake

Photographer: Sebastiano Luciano

Print box and poster design: Lunetta Bartz

Print box production: Lunetta Bartz and Sam Nyalungu at MAKER, Johannesburg, South Africa