Word: exhibition
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...Walker's exhibit unabashedly disturbs the viewer with representation of the images and history underlying racism in America. Like the chromatic form of the piece--black paper on white walls--the exhibit deals with race only in black and white. This form alone, in its insistence on turning negative space into positive space, implies the underlying concept of dialectical racial identities. Walker establishes a visual language that bluntly indicates the race of each silhouetted figure. White figures are marked by a few pointed wisps of hair, a straight nose, and thin lips. Silhouettes of black figures are cut with rounded...
Though much of the exhibit focuses on the horrors of slavery, Walker also effectively explores issues of black assimilation, black self-hatred and class mobility. For example, a black couple in 19th century formal-wear and bristling with haughtiness attempt to establish a safe-haven through European clothing and custom. Yet, the woman's skirt or stole is lined with ferrets, and a head of one remains alive, as its silhouette, too, is shown in profile, turning around to observe her. The scene establishes a dramatic irony; the viewer is aware that this black couple has failed to escape...
These themes of black self-hatred appear multiple times in the exhibit, yet never establishing a clear victim and persecutor. This is one of the central strengths of the exhibit. While it tackles such complex and political topics as black assimilation, it never devolves into a narrative of either blame or exoneration. Rather, Walker explores the inter-connection between white cruelty and black mimicry of whites, between white fetishistic desire of the black female and black female self-annihilation. The ingenuity of Walker's work is that, not only does she represent these cultural phenomena, but she examines how they...
Though Walker reaffirms this concept with a plethora of feeding imagery, the exhibit does not fall simply into a framework of symbolism. The figurativeness of Walker's work exists in the divide between conscious and unconscious more so than the divide between real and metaphor. Walker's images allude to Freud's analysis of dreams. The series of fantastical silhouettes--a tree split in half, a two-headed woman, oddly-shaped flowers, a man with talons--create a visual world that vacillates between dream and nightmare. The dream that Walker unfolds here is not just any dream, but the dream...
...punch of Walker's exhibit is that it refuses to render the challenge of race into a simply rhetorical question. As cynical as the show is, it demands a solution from its audience. Like psycho-analysis, Walker's work reminds the viewer of things that she does not like to know that she knows. It confronts the audience with the grotesque, debasing racial stereotypes that are embedded in our collective psyche, with the hope that bringing them to consciousness will be the first step to their eradication...