first feature: kara walker;

kara walker;

Big, bold shapes, that's what catches my eye majority of the time. It's either that I cannot see very well, or that I find curves and narrative story pieces the best kinds of representational art out there.

Kara Walker's silhouette work attracted me immediately. Form wise, it is exactly what I find attractive in the art world. BOLD.

It was also different from what I usually see in museums and galleries. Sculpture, paintings, photographs. I did not know how to define what category her work would be under. She does do drawings and paintings, but the silhouette work is what really caught my attention. 

They bring back an art form I have only seen in movies and once as a kid growing up. The only time I have seen silhouette work being done was at a small little shop at Disneyland where my parents decided to get our silhouettes done. We each sat down, sitting only momentarily, as these quaint old ladies swiftly and skillfully snip away at a piece of black paper as they chat. The end result being in the profiles of our faces.

Silhouette of my parents (above)

 Walker takes that experience that I had it to the next level. She has these large scale, black  full bodied cut outs, presumably of not actual models, along walls, some having projected backgrounds to add some depths and an appropriate setting and pull your eyes across the room. Walker uses racial caricatures, picaninny, to accentuate characteristics of African Americans.

Although they are "mere" silhouettes, they do depict very powerful messages that bridge unfinished folklore in Antebellum South with issues of race, violence, and identity and gender issues primarily in African American women.

Some of the images are very graphic, if not most. There's a push and pull with each of the images displayed, whether showing the graphic scene of a rape of a small girl by a white man, or the "revenge." Walker does have a sense of humor though, you do see an exchange of power between character images, but what you see to be funny, you kind of feel shameful for laughing at.

"Most pieces have to do with the exchanges of power, attempts to steal power away from others"