Kara Walker
Kara Walker’s world is populated by strange black silhouette figures. Judging by the settings and their clothing, they seem to belong to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The scenes they depict may appear peaceful and charming at first glance, but it quickly becomes apparent how deceptive appearances can be.
Since her artistic debut in 1994, Kara Walker has created an impressive body of work, including collages, paintings, drawings, animated films, and more. She draws inspiration from old stories dating back to the time when slavery was still officially present in America. Although the themes she addresses are heavy – racism, slavery, sexual harassment, and sadism – she imbues them in a surprising way with fantasy, poetry, humor, and love. She uses cut-out figures for this purpose. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States, there was a popular image technique within printmaking, where black silhouette figures animated the scene. Kara Walker revived this forgotten technique and gave it an entirely new dimension. Her life-sized paper silhouette figures, directly attached to walls, are now well-known in the art world.
For her exhibition at the MDD, Kara Walker chose to present a series of recent paper sculptures alongside a walk through her cinematic material. Her earliest animated film, Testimony, dates back to 2004, while the most recent one has just been completed and is premiering at the MDD. Her films are assembled in a very transparent manner: Kara Walker animates the cut-out figures herself using threads and sticks, or she plays with shadows. Sometimes she herself – in full action – also appears on screen. While her first film was purely black and white and without sound, in her latest works, she focused on using color and a soundtrack.
In her films, Kara Walker revisits the old storytelling tradition among black slaves. A fairy-tale imagination is combined with gruesome passages. Her work becomes both a denunciation and a purification. Sarcasm, contradictions, and self-deprecation are integral parts of her approach. Even though she tells a story, Kara Walker allows plenty of space and freedom for the viewer to use their imagination in interpreting what they see.
For example, Calling to me from the angry surface of some grey and threatening sea. I was transported (2007) is a colorful video installation with five projections. Various stories, colors, and images alternate, overwhelming the spectator with impact and diversity. In Testimony: Narrative of a negress Burdened by Good Intentions (2004), her story takes as its starting point that white men become the slaves of black women.
The exhibition at the MDD thus becomes an intense experience in which America’s black past is reexamined or relived through the subjective eyes and hands of an exceptional artist.
