After completing her BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) at the Atlanta College of Art in 1991, Kara Walker received her MFA (Master of Fine Arts) from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. The same year, the resounding success of her exhibit at the New York Drawing Center launched her on the international art scene. Today she teaches at Columbia University.Her work is inseparable from her status as a black artist. In a manner free of any taboos or false modesty, she deals with the most unpleasant aspects of racism and violence in American history. Her work makes use of the silhouette technique first used in the 16th century and further developed in the 18th century, but can also be traced back to Dibutades' daughter, the "first" woman artist and legendary inventor of the painting, who outlined the silhouette of her lover on a rock. Her form of expression also draws from the 19th century panorama and cyclorama repertoire, Goya's engravings, the pseudoscience of physiognomy, minstrel shows, or even the romance novel. Since 1993-1994, her life-size figure installations occupy large walls, like frescoes, in unusual proportions for a practice normally devoted to miniatures (portraits). This scale is reflected in the title: Slavery! Slavery! Presenting a Grand and Lifelike Panoramic Journey Into Picturesque Southern Slavery or Life at “Ol’ Virginny’s Hole” (Sketches From Plantation Life, 1997). The artist condemns the exploitation, oppression of Blacks at the hands of Whites, as well as the hypersexualization of black women. Her work finds a natural extension in animated films (Testimony, Narrative of Negress Burdened by Good Intentions, 2004) and watercolours created since the late 1990s.
Raphaël CUIR
See this illustrated text on the website of the Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
