Artist entry # nickel (5) Kara Walker

Artist Entry #5 Kara Walker

I decided to chose Kara Walker because her work is so powerful and the message she is sending is very obvious. As an artist she takes on the very controversial topics of racism, sexuality and the oppression of the African American community. Kara received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. At first when I saw her work I just saw the silhouettes but not the meanings and thought it was pretty creative; after I actually started to really look at her work I saw the blatant racial subject matter. I can honestly say when I saw what her work was about I thought to myself "here we go, another artist trying to make a political statement in their work"; that stuff is annoying to me. After some serious consideration I realized there is still a lot of obvious racism going on today. Living in Idaho I haven't seen racism towards black people because there isn't that many that live here but with the Hispanic community I notice there is a ton and I understand that she is trying to point out the strong racism that is out there still to this day. So after that I understood why she doing what she is.

Kara does a few different types of media like painting and drawing, but she is famous for her paper cut out silhouette work. Her silhouette work are of large scale that attach and cover entire walls. The images tell a graphic story of racism in the south a perfect example is of the image where what is assumed to be a white boy scout riding a black girl like a horse and dangling a carrot in front of her. To me the narrative is showing the obvious stereotypes of a black girl with big lips and the corn rolls and the white boy scout is using her to get what he needs or wants. You can see the boy dangling the carrot in front of the girl as if promising something great at the end for her but she just has to do what he wants. Kara has even done exhibits where she will put a light projector up with the silhouettes to make the viewer a part of the piece. I like her work because it is so in your face and non-apologetic, it gets straight to the point and has no B.S. I appreciate that because I feel being brutally honest is the best way; if you get offended, oh well.