Kara Walker

Kara Walker has been an up and coming artist for the past decade. Her work has been displayed nationally and internationally in museums worldwide. She is most known for her black cut-out paper silhouettes that address 'the underbelly of America's racial and gender tensions by exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality. She unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violence on one another.' Walker currently lives in New York, where she is a professor of visual arts in the MFA program at Columbia University. Her work is really striking in person because of the way the work is presented with the life-size silhouettes. The fact that the artwork is usually displayed on the walls allows for the viewer to interact with the piece and really feel consumed by what is going on around them. In her most recent works, Walker has been using overhead projectors to throw colored light onto the ceiling, walls, and floor of the installation space. When the viewer walks into exhibition their body casts a shadow onto the walls where it mingles with Walker’s black-paper figures and landscapes. There is a sense of power being exchanged within the characters that are interacting in the pieces. Walker makes sure to address the issues being displayed in her piece with background information that is described in a brief paragraph on the wall.

-Courtney Parkin