see.culture.made.radical: the visual history makers – kara walker

Kara Walker is a New York based artist best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. She is a Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.
Her work examines the ongoing riff-raff in America’s race and gender conversation. Beyond cut-paper silhouettes she takes on narrative vignettes and cyclorama, painting, drawing, text-based works, light projections, video, film and performance.
At the core of Walker’s work is the emergence of cinema, a 19th century phenomena. Her decision to use visual media to unpack themes such as power, repression, history, race and sexuality encourage us to step back and watch movies with a heightened sense of awareness, enabling us to give voice to the issues we are most passionate about.
Walker was destined to become an artist at the age of 2 ½ when she would to sit in her Dad’s studio and watch him create art. Walker’s youthful sense of imagination seeps through to her art. Her work while whimsical, stirs strong emotions, inspires passionate dialogue and challenges various viewpoints.

By Priscilla Ward, AFROPUNK Contributor
All artwork © Kara Walker