Artist Kara Walker
One of Kara Walker’s earliest memories consists of her sitting on her father’s lap watching him draw. She was around the age of three and at that moment she decided that she wanted to be like her father; an artist. Kara was born in Stockton, California but at the age of 13 she moved to the south with her family. Her father, artist Larry Walker, was offered a teaching position at Georgia State University. Kara attended the Atlanta College of Art where she received her BFA, and then got her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Art. She has many accomplishments including being the youngest recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “genius� grant, representing the United States in the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil, and having her first full scale US museum survey at the Walker Art Institute. Currently she resides in New York and is a professor of visual arts at Columbia University. Her signature artwork consists of cut-paper silhouettes. She uses this technique because she sees it as being cartoonish, which in turn allows her to elaborate on racial stereotypes that are reductions of humans. She went to school for drawing and printmaking, but in through her years she has used almost every media possible. She has dabbled in painting, written text, light projection, and video as well as performance. The theme that comes across most in her work is the representation of race. Her silhouettes are all made from black paper which eliminates the need to create skin tones and this allows for all of her characters to be seen as “black�. She also wants to portray history in a different form. Her characters have exaggerated features which make them cartoonish, and in doing so she adds some humor to the dense subject matter of racism, or power.
Kara Walker’s main inspiration is the pre-civil war south. Her art work depicts this time in a skewed fashion. She has been quoted saying,
“The work is two parts research, and one part paranoid hysteria."This thought is what makes her art so interesting. She is able to portray history in her own unique way that makes it interesting again to the viewers. She is both trying to entertain and inform us. The past is something that did happen, and it cannot be forgotten. She shows us the past in an interesting way through the use of cut-paper silhouettes. She uses these silhouettes because she believes it is a very middle-class form of art. It has been traced back to the 18th century when it was used to make shadow portraits, which eventually lost their prestige. It was labeled as more of a craft then an art form. Kara has made this medium her own which is what propelled her to be the artist that she is today.
One artist that is easy to compare and contrast to Kara Walker is Liz Miller. They both use simple shapes in interesting and unique ways. Their work plays tricks on our eyes to allow us to see something that we might not have seen at first glance. A major difference is the use of color in Liz’s work. She uses bright and alluring colors, while Kara sticks to strictly black. They are both interesting in their own way, and I do not believe one’s work is better then the others. Their subject matter is quite different as well. Liz said that she deals with systems, such as weather radar, while Kara touches on more intimate subjects such as race and power. Both of these artists set out to create something unique out of something simple.
If I were to talk to a friend about Kara Walker, I would say that her work is definitely something to be interested in. I became interested in her last year when I viewed her work at the Walker Art Center. She occupied a whole room with an installation specific for that site. It was unbelievable how well it flowed together. The images were provocative, while still being comfortable to look at. Interest is never lost while looking at her work because no matter how many times the work is seen, there always seems to be something new in the shadows. She is a creative woman, and it is wonderful that she is able to share her work with us at such a large scale.
Resources:
http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker?n=Main.HomePage
Walker Art Center website
Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love
An exhibition catalog by Yasmil Raymond
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/walker/index.html
Art:21 website