Kara Walker

Kara Walker was born in 1969 in Stockton, California, and currently lives and works in New York. Her works draw inspiration from the stereotypes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that represented African Americans in Western art and popular culture. Walker's drawings, paintings, and black cardboard silhouettes, such as in the work Miss Matilda’s Practice Cock from 1994, express the painful reality of the antebellum South: life on plantations, the decay of landowners, and the humiliating conditions under which enslaved people lived, forced to endure violence and abuse without any form of restraint.

The male figure, presented in stark black and white that leaves no room for ambiguity, occupies a grotesque space that seems to elevate him only to his condemnation. “The first American silhouettes I saw were a cathartic experience for me. I was struck by the narrative strength, the sense of history, and the racist stereotypes, but especially by the 'shift' upon which they are based: the paradox of cutting a silhouette from a white surface and removing it, thereby leaving a black hole.” The illusionistic void created in her works mirrors the absence of the man's identity, entirely nullified by the reference to a history of racial oppression; the artist's aim is not so much to visually rewrite historically occurring events but to engage, challenge, and provoke the viewer on themes that remain profoundly relevant today.