Erika Bello
Professor Harmon
HUA 101
6/10/16
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is an African American contemporary
artist and painter. Walker was born in Stockman, California in 1969. She
graduated from Atlanta College of art around 1991. She earned a master of fine
Arts degree at Rhode Island school of design. Walker explores race, gender,
sexuality, violence and identity through her work. She is best known for her
room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. According to Walker one of
her artwork called ‘’Darkytown Rebellion’’ uses projectors to throw colored light onto the
ceiling, walls, and floor. Some of Walker’s work is at the Museum of Modern
Art. Also her works includes themes of African American racial identity. Walker
subjects slavery, conflict or violence. According to Walker, she utilizes light
projectors to cast viewers’ own shadows into her silhouetted narratives to
create a deep experience. The silhouette is meaningful to walker’s form because it’s a
metaphor for stereotype. The silhouette allows Walker to play tricks with the
eye. Walker's artwork is about racism in the present and economic inequalities.
While Walker's work is based on traditions of storytelling, she combines fact
and fiction to complete the picture. Some of Walker’s influences include artist
Andy Warhol, Otto Dix and Adrian Piper also some movement that influenced her
was pop art, conceptual art and surrealism. Walker's art
is heavily influenced by growing up as an African American in the South, where
she struggled with the relationship between personal and political identities. One
of Walker’s motives was to investigate interracial desire. In addition she
studied "myths about blackness. Walker’s story is a result of her African American
experience. Walker's elegant lines of her silhouettes, create an interesting
tension with the scenes ofsex, and violence. At age twenty-seven, she was receive the
MacArthur "genius" award. Walker currently lives in New York, where she
is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.
Work
Cited
"Kara Walker." American Decades Primary Sources. Ed. Cynthia Rose.
Vol. 10: 1990-1999. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 37-40. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Web. 11 June 2016.
Decker, Ed, and Paula
Kepos. "Walker, Kara." Contemporary Black Biography.
Ed. Derek Jacques, Janice Jorgensen, and Paula Kepos. Vol. 80. Detroit: Gale,
2010. 147-150. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Web. 11 June 2016.
URL
http://go.galegroup.com.rpa.laguardia.edu:2048/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2624500055&v=2.1&u=cuny_laguardia&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=5a7ea03bf1b0a4ffefff8f23e5c81a4e
http://go.galegroup.com.rpa.laguardia.edu:2048/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2624500055&v=2.1&u=cuny_laguardia&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=5a7ea03bf1b0a4ffefff8f23e5c81a4e
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