Word: exhibits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From the title alone, one can gather that Kara Walker's exhibit positions itself on a fine edge between mockery and representation, between historical narrative and cultural commentary. Rather than narrating history, Walker uses history as a backdrop for a less literal, though just as real, melodrama. Her work unabashedly analyzes the collective unconscious of the American psyche. What she dredges up--racist imagery involving bestiality, child abuse, feces and more--is not pretty. It is grotesque, disgusting, ingenious and eerily beautiful...
...black paper cut-outs form a series of approximately life-size silhouettes staged in a dream-like setting that ranges from rural plantations to stylized gardens. The images of the exhibit move like a dream, occasionally implying a broken chronology, or continuing a narrative through head gestures of the silhouettes. Many of Walker's images combine stereotypes of the devilish, animalistic black American with allusions to the folklore of the "happy darky" who entertains whites and enjoys subservience. The result: the exhibit achieves, in Walker's words, a "reinactment [sic] of history in the arena of desire...
...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...