UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology APRIL 2022 - Flipbook - Page 8
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
KARA WALKER
To enter a Kara Walker exhibition is to become a participant
W
inston Churchill’s oft-used quote,
“The farther back you can look, the
farther forward you are likely to see,”
becomes jarring when applied to art. This is in
part because art is supposed to hold a mirror
up for society, but it is also due in larger part
to the implication of history repeating itself.
Stereotypes feed the repetition, and despite the
abolition of slavery 166 years ago and Women’s
Suffrage winning women the right to vote 102
years ago, race and gender remain polarizing—
and political—issues.
Kara Walker’s art is both polarizing and
political. If you recognize her name, it is
because before she turned 30 in 1999, her
work had already been acquired for myriad
permanent museum collections, including
the Whitney Museum of American Art, and
her large-scale tableaus were already selling
for $50,000-100,000. The New York Times
called her work “shocking” in 1997, and the
startling nature of her work has yet to wear
off.
Born in Stockton, California, Walker moved
to Atlanta as a teen, where her father, the
“urban surfaces” painter Larry Walker, was
a professor. In Georgia, Walker became
immediately subjected to Ku Klux Klanera taunts, and she began to play games by
herself wherein she would imagine herself
as a slave. Her focus on racism did not fully
blossom in her art until she entered Rhode
Island School of Design’s MFA program in
the early-90s. Although she is best known
for her paper cut-out silhouettes, she has
incorporated animation and projection into
exhibitions as well as sculpture, watercolors,
and other mediums.
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To enter a Kara Walker exhibition is to
become a participant. It is not an accident
that we are all complicit in Walker’s work,
and she would not discount any viewer’s
interpretation since she admits to changing
her mind frequently on the meaning of
works and refuses to attach specific meaning
to her characters. The bulk of her work are
silhouettes of scenes, cut from black paper
and often backed with wood. This at once
gives the impression of the work being both
background and foreground, both fullyformed art and blank canvas. The seemingly
blank spaces, too, serve as the proverbial
mirror that forces the viewer to become
complicit in each tableau’s narrative.
It is important, as a viewer, to note that
silhouettes began in the 18th Century, a
women’s craft used in children’s storybooks
and an alternative to the expensive painted
or drawn portrait. Silhouettes as an art
form used primarily by women, as well as it
being seen as a craft rather than fine art, are
important to Walker, but she also appreciates
how they echo the sidelong glance or giving
one’s profile in response or reaction; because
this is a typical female response to men they
distrust and is historically seen as the type of
shifty glance slaves gave that said they were to
be mistrusted, Walker uses the profile as her
personal response to the male gaze, which, in
art, has been considered the only gaze until
very recently.
The works themselves pull historical
stereotypes and fictional Black characters
(think Uncle Tom, Prissy, or Mammy) into
elaborate tableaus, often sexually explicit
and violent, with ample visual metaphors
within the stark beauty of the silhouettes.
