You may have seen our hit exhibition, Unique Multiples, earlier this fall. Our CUIP (Chancellor's Undergraduate Internship Program) Intern, Ava Kristy presented a talk on the Kara Walker print from the exhibition, based on an essay that she received the Arts Dean's Excellence Award for. Her essay is now available here.
The Implicit Eye in the World of Kara Walker
by Ava Kristy
The figures in Walker’s black and white silhouette pieces are somewhat ambiguous, inviting or even obliging viewers to fill in their own perceptions to create cogent narratives. To aid the creation of meanings she offers symbolic forms which guide our understanding. In Boo-hoo, for example, after the clearly female silhouette the second most identifiable figure is a snake. Snakes are imbued with a variety of meanings in Western culture, most popularly the association with the Biblical Eve and the Apple. Here Walker complicates what might be a simple scene, a woman holding a snape and a whip by implicating a complicated religious and social history which draws on the relationship between Christianity and slavery.
Kara Walker, Boo-hoo (2000)
Kara Walker, Slaughter of the Innocents (They Might be Guilty of Something) (2017)
The ambiguity of Walker’s silhouettes prevails upon audiences to distinguish which figures belong to white people and which to black people. This in itself forces a reliance on the stereotypes of facial features and hair types as tools of categorization. Walker also relies on symbols, such as hoop skirts, footwear and weapons, which draw socioeconomic lines. The laying out of these clues allows a guided progression in which the viewer is confronted with the brutality of Slavery through their own ascription of meaning to ambiguous figures. This slow unfolding of horrors stands in stark contrast with idealized views of antebellum life in the South.
Kara Walker, 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)
In the silhouette piece, Slavery! Slavery! Presenting a GRAND and LIFELIKE Panoramic Journey into Picturesque Southern Slavery or “Life at ‘Ol’ Virginny’s Hole’ (sketches from Plantation Life) Walker specifically confronts the works of artists before her who constructed a visual narrative of benevolent slavery. Within the title of the work Walker address the sensationalized depictions of slavery from sources like Gone with the Wind which romanticize the institution. Her play on advertising language such as “grand” and “lifelike” allude to other forms of colonial display and the language used to positively advertise such atrocities. Through this reappropriation of language Walker contextualizes her work in its historically accepted condition.
Kara Walker, Virginia Lynch Mob (1998)
The descriptor “lifelike,” is also indicative of the scale of her work which often occupies full rounded gallery walls, surrounding the viewer on all sides. The immersive nature of this design forces viewers face to face with horrific scenes of violence. The combination of imagery from not only the colonial era, but reconstruction in the South through the 20th Century indicate the ongoing nature of racial violence. Dispelling notions of a static past, Walker offers a sort of mobility to the scene which carries the figures through various eras into the contemporary space of the observer.
Kara Walker, A Subtlety or The Marvelous Sugar Baby (2014)
Exposing a long history of images sexualizing black bodies, Kara Walker plays off this stereotype of sexuality to mark this as a history still in progress. Although in many ways explicit, racism in America seeks to hide under guises of progress from historical wrongs. In explicitly demonstrating these common stereotypes of black female sexuality, Walker forces the viewer to confront the existence and pervasive nature of institutionalized racism which allows these generalizations to appear natural, and to some even unremarkable. The evocative nature of Walker’s installation encourages viewers to react viscerally, but often this resulted in the perpetuation of racist ideologies. The prevalence of visitors taking sexualizing or joking photos demonstrates the lack of public knowledge about the experience of slavery and a lack of regard for those who continue to experience the racist repercussions of history.
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Ava Kristy is a fourth year History of Art and Visual Culture and Legal Studies double major. She is currently the Chancellor's Undergraduate Intern at the Sesnon Art gallery where she works archiving the Farr collection, assisting with various installations and managing gallery volunteers. In the future she plans to pursue a masters and PhD in Art History and eventually teach. When she is not working on Art History she enjoys expanding her own practice in fiber arts.