Kara Walker: Gender, Violence, and Identity

Kara Walker is an American artist who is best known for her large black silhouettes, which are cut from paper and affixed to the walls of various exhibition spaces.  Often, through her art, she critiques racial and gendered stereotypes in America, in a cut-throat and narrative manner.  Walker addresses themes such as power, identity, violence, and sexuality.  The images Walker depicts are typically grotesque, up-front, and rather disturbing at times.  

(Source Image: http://sikkemajenkinsco.com/images/artwork/4369_11-kara_walker_Slavery_Slavery.jpg)

At first glance, Walker's silhouetted figures appear to have emerged from a childhood fairy-tale.  There is certainly something that seems playful and whimsical about the decision to create large, graphic (as in design) cut-outs.  However, upon closer examination, viewers quickly realize that something is not quite right about the subjects Walker depicts.  Clearly, these images are not suitable for children under any circumstances.

Many of the people Walker has carefully constructed are neither male nor female, due to the fact that they appear to possess reproductive organs of both sexes and cannot be easily identified as being one gender or the other.  Hermaphroditic figures are actually very common in the arts, and can be traced back to the Hellenistic Age.

 

(Source Image/L-R: http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5262/5570707184_01c349ebeb_z.jpg; http://rudegirlmag.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/kara-walker-211.jpg)

Gender/Identity can be discussed as a major theme in both of these selected pieces.  The statue and the silhouette are fairly generic looking and may not appear to be direct representations of a specific person.  This is especially true of Walker's work, due to the fact that it is simply a black outline of a figure that could be a portrait of a man or a woman.  Each piece is playing with ideas about the fascination with curiosities in nature (in this case, the hermaphrodite), for the mixed genitalia seems to be such a prominent element in both of the works shown above.  I feel that Kara Walker's body of work connects back to the Hellenistic Period for several reasons, this being one of them.

Additionally, one should mention that Walker is especially interested in the narrative, myths, and traditional stories told widely throughout her culture.  Many of her pieces are representative of folklore and derive imagery that was passed down to her from generation to generation.  While the stories vary, this can certainly be said of Greek/Roman art as well.  Classical and Hellenistic artists found subjects in nature/life, but they also looked back to literature and beliefs... Walker does the same.  The result is grotesque and imaginative imagery, often times exaggerated forms, figures, and representations. 

In the following video, Walker discusses how she finds inspiration in stories and the imagination, and also how these ideas make her fairly uneasy: Click Here!

While Walker draws upon her own experiences and identity as she understands it, there are certain practices that most definitely parallel those of the Hellenistic Age of Art.