Stanmore College Contextual Studies Blog: KARA WALKER

“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.” —Kara Walker

Kara Walker (42) is a living, Californian African American contemporary artist, who uses paper cutting & silhouettes to express gender, violence, sexual, race and identity themes in an ironic, humorous and sometimes grotesque manner.

Through, she communicates the racism, sexual objectification, torture and violence of the 19^th century slavery.

She uses a narrative panorama of each of her cut outs of black paper on the white gallery background to create a story line, a tall tale by images.

The illusion of depth is added to her pieces by placing images, of a background, higher up on the wall.

Her use of silhouettes is an ironic way to express this specific theme as you can't really see what's going on up front, as the stories of these incidents are now forgotten, she makes us remember by not showing us directly, but, instead, letting us use out imagination, adding colour and life to where she only presents a figure.

The black, white & the occasional grey Walker uses to present her pieces gives the whole show a feel of antiquity. Her exhibitions are made even more valuable and rare, as Walker destroys her open wall pieces once the exhibition closes.

On pages 3 & four of my sketch book I did a copy of this piece, doing it in both the black against white & vice-versa for a full negative-positive view. This chosen piece demonstrates, to me, a lack of a will to live, the young girl must have been through an obvious amount of abuse. In the smoke you can also observe a female face and a town, this could mean that she's burning everyone along with herself.