Kara Walker was born in 1969 in America. She is
well-known for her large scale paper silhouettes. Her silhouettes are based
upon America`s gender and racial tensions. Her work always shows history race,
sexuality, power and sometimes violence. She was inspired to be an artist by
her dad. She said “One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad’s
lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I
remember thinking: ‘I want to do that, too,’ and I pretty much decided then and
there at age 2½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.” She is
currently a visual arts professor at Columbia University in the MFA program.
Her work with silhouettes began in 1993 as a student at Rhode Island School of
Design. She thought that simplified parts of a human in the black cut outs,
seemed a bit cartoonish. “I’m reducing things down a lot, but I’m also
characterizing everything and everyone as a black thing, and it comes from a
way of viewing the world, looking for blackness, in its good and nefarious
forms.” As you may realise the black paper cut-out’s that she makes are stereo
typical. For example to show a black woman, she made the silhouette of a woman
have big lips and a big bottom. Similarly for a rich white man she would make
the man have a top hat, long coat and good shoes. Walker was in one way pulled towards the
topic of racial tension because of what she had gone through herself. This was when she lived in California. She
said that she “just didn't get the rules," she says. "I didn't know
what the story was that made people behave in very particular ways that I
thought were pre-scripted and unnatural. I started looking for my own point of
origin: maybe the point of origin was being American, or being black, or being
a woman. I thought, 'I'll start with the foundation of this idea of a place, of
America, and then work my way forward.'" The scale of her work is
always large. The cut outs or silhouettes are stuck on to the walls in rooms
(gallery rooms). They are the size of the wall.
I think that her work is really good. This is because as
well as it being art, it has a history linked with it. Her work is very strong.
This may be because the work she does is linked to her. I also like the way
that she uses stereotypes to portray the silhouettes because that way she can
show and tell us a story behind the art that she has created. In addition, I
like how she uses the cut out (silhouettes) to create an illusion and leaves
the audience guessing the story behind the art).
Here are a few images of her work:
Here are the URLs that I have used:
- http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker/Main/Biography
- http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker/Main/TechniquesAndMedia
- http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/10/kara-walker-art-shadows-of-slavery
- http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker/Main/Humor
- http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker/Main/RepresentingRace
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