Kara Walker

Infobox Artist
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name = Kara Walker


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caption = "Cut", Cut paper and adhesive on wall, Brent Sikkema NYC.
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birthdate = November 26, 1969
location = Stockton, California
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nationality = American
field = Collage art
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Kara Walker (born November 26, 1969) is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes.

Biography

Walker was born in Stockton, California. Her retired father is a formally educated artist, a professor, and an administrator. Her mother worked as an administrative assistant and was inspired by her family to reveal her own artistic talents. Walker's education includes an MFA at Rhode Island School of Design in Painting/Printmaking, and a BFA in Painting/Printmaking at Atlanta College of Art.

Career

Some of Walker's exhibitions have been shown at The Renaissance Society in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Walker has also been shown internationally and featured on PBS. Her work graces the cover of musician Arto Lindsay's recording, "Salt" (2004).

Walker's silhouette images work to bridge unfinished folklore in the Antebellum South, raising identity and gender issues for African American women in particular. However, because of her truthful approach to the topic, Walker's artwork is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's Pop Art during the 1960s (indeed, Walker says she adored Warhol growing up as a child). Her nightmarish yet fantastical images incorporate a cinematic feel. Walker uses images from historical textbooks to show how white people depicted African American slaves during Antebellum South. Some of her images are grotesque, for example, in "The Battle of Atlanta," [http://www.brentsikkema.com/karawalker.html] a white man, presumably a Southern soldier, is raping a black girl while her brother watches in shock, a white child is about to insert his sword into a nearly-lynched black woman's vagina, and a male black slave rains tears all over an adolescent white boy.

In 1997, Walker—who was 28 at the time—was one of the youngest people to receive a MacArthur fellowship. [Hilton Als, "The Shadow Act", The New Yorker, October 8, 2007.]

In response to Hurricane Katrina, Walker created "After the Deluge," since the hurricane had devastated many poor and black areas of New Orleans. Walker was bombarded with news images of "black corporeality," including fatalities from the hurricane reduced to bodies and nothing more. She likened these casualities to African slaves piled onto ships for the Middle Passage, the Atlantic crossing to America.

In 2007, Walker was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World, Artists and Entertainers, in a citation written by fellow artist Barbara Kruger. [ Barbara Kruger (2007) [http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1595332_1616818,00.html "Kara Walker"] "Time" online. Retrieved 26 July 2007] .

Walker lives in New York and is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.

ee also

*Silhouette
*African American culture
*African American art

Footnotes

References

"Kara Walker: Pictures From Another Time." Ed. Goldbaum, Karen. Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc. ISBN 1-891024-50-7

External links

* [http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1595326_1595332_1616818,00.html The Time 100: Time Magazine's Profile of Kara Walker]
* [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/walker/ Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips] from PBS series "" - Season 2 (2003)
* [http://www.artnet.com/awc/kara-walker.html Kara Walker catalogue in artnet's "Artist Works Catalogues"]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzLBq1D3ZcE Interview with Kara Walker on YouTube]
* [http://www.moma.org/onlineprojects/conversations/trans_kwalker.html An interview with Kara Walker]
* [http://www.brentsikkema.com/karawalker.html Biographical, press, and works information]
* [http://collections.walkerart.org/item/agent/1250 Kara Walker's work information at the Walker Art Center]
* [http://renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions/Intro.51.0.0.0.0.html Kara Walker's exhibition at The Renaissance Society, 1997]
* [http://www.whitney.org/www/exhibition/kara_walker/index.html Kara Walker's 2007 Whitney Exhibit]
* [http://www.haberarts.com/walker.htm Review of Kara Walker's Whitney exhibit] by John Haber
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4o2RS7mtWo Video clip of Kara Walker's Whitney exhibit, Prt I] by James Kalm
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daLFLM40lbg Video clip of Kara Walker's Whitney exhibit, Part II] by James Kalm
* [http://redcat.org Kara E. Walker's Song of the South at REDCAT]