Featured Artist: Kara Walker

Kara Walker's work is deeply connected to themes of race and identity, history, culture, and the darker side of human nature. In particular, she often places her works within the context of the pre-Civil War South. The facial features, body shapes, and costumes of her white and black figures are precise and often exaggerated, using line and form to not only signify ethnicity but to comment on the way we use race to define ourselves.

The Emancipation Approximation, 2000

Many of her works are sihouettes, a form of art popular in the 18th century. She plays with the irony of using such imagery to present a criticism of the time period. "Walker's compositions play off stereotypes and portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters and slaves engage in a profoundly unsettling historical struggle" (http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa857.htm) 

Works from Walker's My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love exhibit

Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress, 2002