Kara Walker

Kara installing "The end of Uncle Tom" - 1997

One of the most important things that I have come away with from my Art 108 class is a better understanding of art itself. I have a new found awareness when reading an art piece. I take into consideration every aspect of the work, instead of taking it at face value. I feel like I can view work from artist like Kara Walker and get a lot closer to finding the artists intent.

"Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress" -2002

I was originally drawn to Kara's art because it is very graphic and eye catching. Her silhouettes have a whimsical quality that I found very appealing, but once you start to take in the narrative, you realize the depth that is there. I don't know if her message could have been better illustrated any other way. The comic quality of her work makes a difficult subject matter, very approachable. Knowing that there is a lot of emotion tied to the subject of slavery, especially in the Civil War era, I found it wise to keep the art simple and void of color. I really think that Kara's approach allows you to get past your preconceived ideas and view the subject matter in a new way.

"Slavery! Slavery! " Cyclorama - 1997

In reading about Kara and her artistic process, I found her reasons for choosing the silhouette form to depict her characters, extremely fascinating. She talks about wanting to get away from paint because of how she felt it historically represented her ethnical origins. The silhouette has links to "middle class" and "craft" and there is a "reduction of human beings to their physical appearance" She also talks about the cutouts being void of the human touches that paint often has.



The art of Kara Walker is so important for so many reasons. She addresses things like race, sexuality, gender and oppression. She depicts these things in a accessible, yet thought provoking way and although her art has impacted many people, I get the sense that her work is also a personal journey. I find more and more that successful art, to me, is when I get the sense that the finished product is just evidence of the path the artist was taking.

“I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful. I wanted to create something that looks like you. It looks like a cartoon character, it’s a shadow, it’s a piece of paper, but it’s out of scale. It refers to your shadow, to some extent to purity, to the mirror.” —Kara Walker