UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology APRIL 2022 - Flipbook - Page 9
"re-writing Black History, 400 years of bondage, 25 years of Boredom (1994) " Copyright Kara Walker
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
Portraying Black slaves as both the seductress
and the molested, exaggerating lips,
and use of body language are just a few
examples of how Walker questions historical
stereotypes in both fiction and society, and
these stereotypical physical traits lead to
her more pressing questions: why do these
fictions keep occurring, why are Blacks
hypersexualized by pop culture, and why was
so much of the trauma left out of any official
historical record?
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“re-writing Black History, 400 years of
bondage, 25 years of Boredom,” a brush and
ink drawing purchased by Whitney Museum
in 1994, is only 18x12”. The drawing could
be viewed as a marking out of Black history
in order to rise into a blank space where the
future may be constructed by a Black hand.
Or it could be a play on the saying, “rewriting
history.” Walker will occasionally take a
cliché or common saying (think “beating a
dead horse” or “you’re a monkey’s uncle”)
and reconstruct it as a visual play on words.
