Kara Walker @ the Whitney Museum
Posted on October 15, 2007
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Sybil Chan
My experience in Kara Walker’s intriguing exhibit started the moment I stepped off the elevators of the Whitney Museum’s third floor. Before me stood a wide, panoramic wall, painted in pristine white, covered in black silhouettes. At first I was a little overwhelmed; each crisp figure clamored for my attention, and I did not know where to begin. My very first impression was of how “cute and dainty” this art seemed, like paper dolls cut out and suspended in time. As I swept my casual glance over the entire depiction, I could make out people, frozen in mid-step, caught in laughter, each doing their own thing, yet somehow interacting. I took note of the artist’s style: Kara Walker conveyed a lot of motion using clean, sweeping, curving lines; it almost seemed like something out of an offbeat novel, with lively, cavorting characters in the prime of their lives, oblivious to onlookers like me.
Finally, a second look revealed the true nature of her work, not quite fact, but not wholly fiction. Rather, an artistic window into a very dark, very real part of America’s past: slavery, and what I saw to be a different portrayal of the many sufferings of the enslaved, particularly women and children, robbed of their innocence and freedom.
The images throughout the entire exhibition jumped out at me. A young girl, a broad grin on her face; she appears uncaring (unknowing?) that she has birthed two babies, and they are simply dropping from her; one has already landed on its head in a pool of blood. A man, standing or walking; his leg has been messily hewn off at the knee. A group of women clinging to each other; each is reaching to suckle at another’s breasts. A single young woman, jumping with a gleeful smile, her heels clicked together; there is a pool of blood at her feet and a razor in her hand and her wrists have been cut so deeply that her hands are barely attached to her arms…
Shocking. Terrible. Sickening. Discomforting. That is how I would most plainly describe Walker’s exhibition. But then again, I wouldn’t say any differently about slavery.
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