HAHAMAG

SPOTLIGHT ON KARA WALKER

In honor of Black History Month, these last few days of February we’ll be spotlighting notable African-Americans in the art world.

First up is Artist, Kara Walker - known best for her explosive black silhouettes resembling paper cut-outs whose imagery boldly explores race, culture, gender and identity issues.

Born in 1969, Walker attended the Rhode Island School of Design and has gone on to showcase her work in some of the finest museums around: MOMA, SFMOMA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, just to name a few.

In 2007, Walker was listed among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. In the article, fellow artist Barbara Kruger summed up Walker’s work amazingly with this quote. “Walker’s vigilance has produced a compelling reckoning with the twisted trajectories of race in America. Her installations and films forcefully pluralize our notion of a singular “history.” They create a profusion of back stories and revisions that slash and burn through the pieties of patriotism and the glosses of “color blindness.” Restarting the engines of seemingly archaic methods, from the graphic affect of silhouette portraits to the machine-age ethos of film, she produces a cast of characters and caricatures with appetites for destruction and reproduction, for power and sex.”

I just don’t think there’s much to say after that…

Come follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/hahamag) as we tweet fun facts all day about Walker to accompany our bio of this art powerhouse on our site.

*photo courtesy of Time magazine.

Source: hahamag.com