Slavery in Silhouette

I’ve been trying to find an excuse to write about the artist Kara Walker for some time. But because much of what I write here is New York-related, and there weren’t any current exhibitions open, I’ve held off. Today I have an excuse: Walker has opened a show, presented by no other than New York City Opera, a companion exhibition to the opera’s production of Margaret Garner, of which I wrote a few days ago.

You may have seen Walker’s work: silhouettes created with all of the delicacy and grace of their eighteenth and nineteenth century counterparts. Then you look closer and you have to ask

“what the . . .?”



It’s sex and violence on the plantation.

Her work has been called works of “imagined slave narratives” . I say “Imagined? Really?” I wouldn’t be surprised if nearly everything in Walker’s images didn’t happen at least once. If you look at the drama of the painting “The Modern Medea” by Thomas Satterwhite Nobles from last Tuesday's blog, you can see a kinship.

My first look at Walker's work came at a gallery in Soho some years ago. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, and I don’t recall more than one person being in the gallery with me. It wasn’t until later that I was reminded that silhouette cutting was a pasttime of genteel white ladies, including plantation mistresses. I wonder what they would have made of Walker’s work? Would they have been drawn in by the initial prettiness of it all, only to be confronted with the very thing that haunted their days and nights.


You can look at Walker's art in books, but I think you should see her pieces in person. “Kara Walker on the Occasion of Margaret Garner”, 42 prints, made from the artist's work will be at the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center until November 19. Although not the original paper cuts, it should prove to be a thought-provoking show.


Note: The image at the very top Emancipation Approximation is from "Kara Walker on the Occasion of Margaret Garner"; I chose the other images Camptown Ladies (middle) and Burn (at right) to give you some idea of Walker's work.