On the Map

Artist William Kentridge’s tapestry for Ermenegildo Zegna’s London store weaves a tale of topography, tradition, fabrics and figures.

- Amy Serafin

All through history, people have woven tapestries to tell stories. A new one by South African artist William Kentridge, hanging in the Ermenegildo Zegna store on New Bond Street in London, tells several interconnected tales, including that of the visionary Italian entrepreneur Ermenegildo Zegna, who took his father’s looms and built a wool mill in Trivero, in the Alpine foothills, in 1910.

Today, the fourth generation of Zegnas carry on the story of this family-run company. When they planned a new shop for London, Ermenegildo’s granddaughter, Anna Zegna, sought out Kentridge to create a tapestry for the company’s Art in Global Stores series. ‘There are so many connections between what we do – our work, passion, tradition and heritage – and how he treats materials is the same,’ says Zegna. ‘We needed to connect the dots in weaving this history of ours into a tapestry that could be a sort of film, connecting the bits and pieces.’

Although unfamiliar with the Zegna brand prior to this commission, Kentridge did own something by it. ‘By chance I looked inside a jacket I’d bought several years ago and discovered that it was from that shop,’ he says. He has also produced a great deal of artwork in Italy, including mosaics for a metro station in Naples, a frieze on the banks of the River Tiber, and work for the staging of The Magic Flute at La Scala in Milan.