Narratives of a negress

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition "Kara Walker: Narratives of a negress" organized by The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and the Williams College Museum of Art, 2003. Artist Walker´s large-scale installations of black paper cutouts, silhouettes that from a distance look like lively, theatrical scenes from the antebellum era but which upon closer examination prove to be sharp-edged, sexually graphic, and disturbing parodies, have elicited both high praise and vehement condemnation. This well-designed and illuminating book is the first to grapple with Walker´s audacious and shrewdly provocative inquiries into the sexual and racial stereotypes that arose from the Deep South´s culture of oppression and hypocrisy, terror and hate, and that continue to poison lives today. Critical essays discuss Walker´s rich visual lexicon and subversive humor, her use of silhouettes to strongly contrast black and white and conceal detail, thus reducing individuals to the roles racism forced on them. Walker´s fascination with colonial fantasies, pulp romance, and slave narratives is thoroughly analyzed, as are her writings, a crucial aspect of her bold investigations into racial caricatures. Walker gives new meaning to the term body politic as she cajoles viewers into confronting painful questions of power, sex, and race.