Introduction
Kara Walker is a modern African-American visual artist who focuses on race, sexuality, violence, identity, and race in her artworks. Born on 26 November 1969 in Stockton, California, the artist is renowned for her big tableaux of black designed paper shapes. He father was a former professional artist, university professor, and a manager while her mother worked as a secretary. Kara grew with a good relationship with his father whom she was quoted as saying that her best memories are about the times she sat on his father’s laps in the studio in their house’s garage and watch him draw. She remembers thinking that she too wanted to be an artist while only 3 years old.
After his father accepted a teaching position at Georgia State University, Kara Walker and her family moved south. She studied at Atlanta College of Art and Rhode Island School of Design where she obtained her BFA and MFA in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Her first mural titled “Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart” brought her to the limelight in 1994. This uncommon silhouette mural, presenting the traditional south and characterized with slavery and sex became so great that it earned the young artist fame in the art world (Hans 488).
At only 27 years of age, Kara Walker became the second youngest recipient prestigious John and Catherine McArthur Foundation owned “Genius” grant. She was the second recipient after David Stuart, the renowned Mayanist, who had initially won the grant from the foundation after his outstanding artworks. The first full-scale United States museum survey on her works was conducted in 2007 at the Walker Art Center exhibition that includes many of her artworks. She currently lives in New York City where she teaches arts in the master’s program at the Columbia University. She derived her influences from notable artists such as Robert Colescott and Andy Warhol. Cotter Holland, while reviewing the works of Kara Walker in The New York Times argued that she (Walker) preferred the works of Warhol because of his “omnivorous” sight and observation of morality in his paintings. Walker also loved Colescott’s works because of the inclusion of animation in his artworks.
Walker has had a successful career in art. Most of her exhibitions have been featured at the Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum, Chicago’s Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, The Renaissance Society and Museum of Contemporary Art, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The other places where Walker’s artworks have featured include the Minneapolis Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California, and the Art Institute of Chicago. On PBS, most of Walker’s works have been shown to the international audience on the different programs and art documentaries. When Arto Lindsay completed the Salt album in 2004, it was the artwork of Kara Walker that was chosen as the cover of the album. She has also produced artworks in video animation, magic lantern projections, shadow puppets, ochre gouaches, and many black paper silhouettes. These are some of her most successful and recognizable pieces in the art world.
Her silhouette artworks function as a reconciling factor of the incomplete mythology in the Antebellum South. These works raise gender and identity issues; specifically for the black women. However, because she opts for a combative paradigm on these issues, her pieces reminds the art world of the art works, Pop Art, of Andy Warhlol during the mid and the late 1960s – Walker says that she loved the works of Warhlol while growing up. Walker incorporates fantasy and nightmare in her works that brings a cinematic mood while viewing her art. She develops the images obtained from books of history to indicate the depiction of the slaves during the Antebellum of the South era. Some of Walker’s artworks are surreal, for instance, The Battle of Atlanta, which depicts a white male, a Southern soldier, sexually assaulting a black girl as her brother looks in disbelief. It is the same artwork that depicts a young white child inserting his weapon into an injured black female’s genital, while a black man weeps uncontrollably.
When she first introduced her work at a public exhibition in New York’s The Drawing Center in 1994, Holzwarth says that her exhibition “polarized” the region’s art. At the age of 28 in 1997, Walker achieved the McArthur Fellowship Grant because of the criticism she attracted and the intriguing fact that her controversial artworks showing black oppression where popular among the white community. At a 1999 public exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Art, removed her works including “Where the Girls Are: Prints by Women” and “A Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts” (1995) from the institute’s art collection. The first artwork was expunged from the collection of the DIA after a protest from African American artist who thought it was inappropriate. However, the silhouettes of the antebellum south plantations depiction were reinstated in the DIA’s permanent collection as was reported by the institute’s spokesperson (Goldbaum 45).
While responding to the devastations of the Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans, the artist made “After the Deluge” while showing the grave effects of the hurricane on the poor families that were mainly drawn from the African American community. She was shocked by the media images that showed high levels of helplessness and widespread deaths of blacks. She said that the dead bodies resembled the manner in which African slaves were piled onto ships for shipment across the Atlantic to the American plantations during the Triangle Trade.
After these achievements, in 2007 the artist entered the Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential persons on earth on the entertainers and artists category. Two years later in 2009, she curated “Score”, the 11th volume of Merge Records. In February of the same year, she was included in the beginning of the exhibition at the newly established Sacramouche Gallery where she showcased “The Practice of Joy Before Death: It Just Would not Be a Party Without You” artwork. The latest works by the artist include “Dust jackets for the Niggerati- and Supporting Dissertations”, “Frum Grace”, and “Drawings submitted by Dr. Kara E. Walker”. “The Moral Arc of History” caused controversial debates among fellows at the Newark Public Library when the artwork was featured in the reading area. The people raised concerns over the appropriateness of the location of the image. Despite the fact that it was covered, it remained in the library until the end of 2012. After some lobbying among the staff members, the artwork was uncovered and continued hanging in the library.
Works Cited
Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Art Now, Vol. 3: A cutting-edge selection of today's most exciting artists. Taschen, 2008
Goldbaum, Karen, ed. Kara Walker: Pictures From Another Time. Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc, 2009
