One of the more challenging rooms Cam and I visited at the Chicago Institute of Art (at the beginning of August) was one exhibiting the work of Kara Walker (b.1969) in a show titled, Rise Up Ye Mighty Race!.

I’d vaguely heard of her before but had no idea we were about to encounter her work. Unexpectedly, around a corner, we were confronted with her installation of cut-out silhouettes, huge framed black and white drawings, and some smaller coloured mixed media drawings, all of them continuing her theme of racial stereotype.

A painter as a student, Walker soon began creating larger-than-life cut-out paper silhouettes that represented, in a grotesque way, masters and slaves from the American Civil War south in eroticized and violent narratives.

From the Institute website: “For Walker, the simplified details of a human form in the black cutouts resonate with racial stereotypes. She has said, ‘The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that’s also what the stereotype does.'”

Recalling that silhouettes (popular in the 1700s and 1800s) were originally created from the profiles of real people (usually well-to-do), it’s interesting to note that using this anachronistic technique, Walker creates figures that appear as historical representations yet are completely fabricated – there was no real person on which to base the silhouette.

In past work, Walker’s two-dimensional caricatures have been made of black paper placed on white walls; here they are both white and black silhouettes against a dark grey wall. Seemingly less stark, they almost appear as images of friendships within a cozy home. Yet look closer and you’ll find Walker’s usual revelation of imminent violence. Even so, there is an undeniably seductive nature to the medium even as one is repelled by the imagery.

Of this exhibition the Institute website continues:

“The title refers to comments made by Barack Obama in his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, about the challenges of community organizing in Chicago, in which he quotes the Jamaican political leader Marcus Garvey (1887–1940). Merging handwritten text with the images in the drawings, the work takes a diaristic form that revolves around The Turner Diaries, written in 1978 by the white nationalist William Luther Pierce, and investigates the notion of the “race war” as it exists in the contemporary imagination. Walker has referred to the work in progress as, ‘a kind of paranoid panorama wall work—with supplemental drawings large and small, to chronicle what can be called a diary of my ever-present, never-ending war with race.'”

A powerful and disturbing exhibition, Walker doesn’t shy away from taboo subjects. In previous works, the sexual and violent natures of her characters are much more evident than in this exhibition, expressed as they are against the elegance and whimsy of the cut-out form.

To hear a fascinating interview of Kara Walker in conversation with curator Lisa Dorin, click on the image below.

You can also click here to see a trailer for the PBS programme, ‘Art 21,’ that includes Kara Walker and her work. (I await it from the library!)

Soooooooo, I hope I’ve piqued your curiosity about Kara Walker and you’ll go looking for more of her work. I have a great admiration for her, for coming up with such an original way to express her thoughts on issues that matter to her. Love to know what you think!!

Thanks for being here. Next time I’m hoping to show you more of my work.

Until then,

~ Gail

PS. For more on the history of silhouettes, click here.