Contemporary artist, Kara Walker, is best known for her artwork about identity (sex, race, gender, etc.) and its relationship with violence. She attended the Atlanta College of Art and later got her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Walker’s career was steady throughout the 90’s and really took off after her exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, premiered at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2007.
This exhibition (pictured above) featured images of what Walker imaged to be what life was like on plantations in the south before the civil war happened. I can’t find photos of the full exhibition, but there were more than one hundred of these silhouette images collages together to create a larger narrative.
Walker’s other popular work includes a gigantic sugar sculpture which resides in an abandoned Domino’s Sugar Factory. The work is a response to our modern day relationship with slavery as Americans. It’s also meant to comment on the mythologizing of black women’s bodies.
Overall, Kara Walker is an important contemporary artist and I chose her because I feel like everybody should know about he work, especially Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, going into the collage project.
Citations:
https://www.karawalkerstudio.com
https://www.themodern.org/exhibition/kara-walker-my-complement-my-enemy-my-oppressor-my-love
drawing into space 