The Arts in New York City

It seems that Kara Walker got misunderstood. It was really hard to explain her silhouettes because if you never saw them, you wouldn’t understand how her sharp and elegant lines make something so disturbing. Kara Walker attracts our eye and pulls us into her story of sexism and racism with these figures. The black silhouettes mock the African American figures, as they are always destined to be that color, even in art. The silhouettes also create a sense of mystery, since they only define the edges of the people, not what is really going on within them.

Kara Walker’s videos were also profound. The first and most important (to me at least) video explained the process of an African coming to America. She played with a lot of morphing techniques. For example, an island soon became an African American’s head eating slaves.

My favorite piece was Darkytown Rebellion because it incorporated color. In a dark corner, a parade of dark people marches. However, this march is mocking their victory. A fat white man watches over the parade as a white woman (deduced from her large fancy dress) crushed a baby. Even though the African American people want a victory march, they are still under the power of the whites. This is ironic because color is shown over the silhouettes, even though they are trapped din a white man’s world.