Thursday, November 15, 2007

Kara Walker (Nicole's Pick)





My artist of the week is Kara Walker. Greg showed us her work in class and I found it really interesting. Born in California, she moved to Georgia in her early teens. She was apprehensive about the movie to the south due to fears of racial issues. Her work deals primarily with gender and race issues of African American women during “Antebellum South”, creating an almost alternate world and nightmare effect. Her techniques range from painting to drawing. She is more widely known for her signature black paper silhouette installations. I respond to her work because she is dealing with an issue that she originally feared when moving to the south. She confronts her fears through her work and uses it as a type of therapy, much like I am attempting to do with my fear of dolls. Kara Walker relates to Nicholas Di Genova in that they both combine images, whether they be animal or human, to create new and often exaggerated forms.

1 comment:

Gregory Thielker said...

Kara Walker has been getting a lot of press lately- related to shows in NYC and Paris. The New Yorker article from 2nd week of October is a nice description... http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_als