Kara Walker
![Kara Walker](/assets/img/authors/kara-walker.jpg)
Kara Walker
Kara Elizabeth Walkeris an African American contemporary artist and painter who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. Walker lives in New York and has taught extensively at Columbia University. She is currently serving a five-year term as Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth26 November 1969
CountryUnited States of America
Humor's always been the problem of my work, hasn't it? When working, I feel satisfied when I surprise myself. And when I surprise myself, I wind up laughing.
I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know what it was I wanted to say.
I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.
I've seen people glaze over when they're confronted with racism, and there's nothing more, you know, damning and demeaning to having any kind of ideology than people just walking the walk and saying what they're supposed to say and nodding, and nobody feels anything.
It feels like a game, this work I do. It is totally heartfelt, and I love the sticky terrain, the straight-up cartoons, how the irrepressible and icky rise to the surface. But I am not just trying to call forth bugaboos and demons for the sake of it, for fun.
I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful
Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings.
If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'
I think really the whole problem with racism and its continuing legacy in this country is that we simply love it. Who would we be without the 'struggle?'
I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.
I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.
I really love to make sweeping historical gestures that are like little illustrations of novels.
I guess there was a little bit of a slight rebellion, maybe a little bit of a renegade desire that made me realize at some point in my adolescence that I really liked pictures that told stories of things - genre paintings, historical paintings - the sort of derivatives we get in contemporary society.
I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.