An
extraordinary disappointment of the modern world is how little recognition
female artists (anything other than music) receive. From memory, only two come
to mind, Frida Kahol and Annie Leibovitz, not to be mistaken as anything less
than great but surely being familiar with the two only touches the surface of
female artists worthy of praise. As new
outlets for expression emerge and old mediums withstand the test of time, it’s
important to acknowledge works of female artists’ such as Kara Walker. Not to be
confused with the silhouettes of fairy tales like Peter Pan who prances along
your bedroom wall and you just can’t seem to catch him, Walker’s silhouettes
merge the realities of the history of racism with art. As noted by artnews.com,
Kara Walker is making headlines “Kara Walker was on exhibit from late 2007 to
[early last year (09)]” at the Whitney Museum. Like graffiti artist Princess
Hijab, Kara seeks “revenge”, not against capitalism so much, but against the
oppression of people because of their race, gender, and or sexuality.
In creating her
silhouette installations, Kara works primarily in black and white, the absence
of color itself a commentary of the struggles between white and black
throughout history. Power struggle is a constant theme found throughout all her
work. Her intention is for “"The silhouette [to] says a lot with very
little information, but that's also what the stereotype does,”. When seeing
Kara’s work for the first time it is easy to miss the details for instance the
use of certain caricatures, mammies, sambos, slave mistresses, masters, and
Southern belles, to represent the realities of slavery. Perhaps this is
intentional because like Walker’s subtleties in her work people also swept
racism and other inequalities under the rug until the oppressed would finally
find their voice.
For her most
recent installation at Art Institute of Chicago Walker displayed “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race!” which ran from
February to August of 2013. In this exhibit Walker explores the more
contemporary realities of white supremacist rhetoric as opposed to her often
historical depictions of the war on race. The installation is a compilation of
her famous silhouettes as well as graphite drawings and many smaller mixed
media works all exploring the all to recent battle in the war on race. Equally as important is the use of setting and
scale, which often make use of an entire room, to breathe life in to her
otherwise simplified works.
Walker’s work has also been featured in
smaller settings such as the Newark Public Library where a drawing of President
Obama struggle to give a speech in the midst of chaos as a white cross
apparently on fire looms in the background. Certainly Walker is not afraid to
make the viewer uncomfortable, forcing them to question their own understanding
of contemporary racial attitudes and never letting them forget about the
violent past. There is so much chaos and controversy surrounding the figure of
Barack Obama and the burning cross that the image of a black woman whose face
is being forced into the gentiles of a white man is almost an understatement.
This type of controversial work has followed Walker throughout her entire
career becoming a signature for her as an artist.
Being a female artist makes it challenging to
gain recognition within the community but being a black female artist poses an
even greater challenge. This stigma has been with her since her days in art school
where her professor often inquired “why her art didn’t look like
her, presumably because it didn’t seem to deal directly or exclusively with
“black experience.” Defying the odds against Kara Walker has risen to fame receiving
the MacArthur foundation genius grant at the age of 27 over ten years ago. Be
on the lookout for this incredible artist whose work pushes the limits forcing
the viewer to confront himself in a very real and raw way.
Where the Great Women Artists Are Now by Barbara A. MacAdam, http://www.artnews.com/2007/02/01/where-the-great-women-artists-are-now
Veiled Threat by
ttp://www.artic.edu/exhibition/kara-walker-rise-ye-mighty-race
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