Kara Walker Explores Past Stereotypes

Kara Walker uses black life-sized silhouettes to “examine the underbelly of America’s racial and gender tensions. (Wilson).” Her work investigates stereotypes of the African American race. Walker “explores the brutalities of the past and is able to join together racial stereotypes and decorative arts” (Arnason 739).Kara Walker’s “characters have the physiognomy of “Black Memorabilia,” the pickaninnies and the sambos that defined popular depictions of African- American’s created for a white audience (739).” The black cut paper silhouettes, serve as an irony of the white race. Cut-paper profile portraits were popular domestic decorations in Middle-class American homes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries(739).
It is important to investigate history. Some topics may be more difficult and painful to re-examine than others. However, through investigation one may be able to help prevent similar events from reoccurring. Kara Walker displays painful misrepresentations of her culture. These elaborate silhouettes serve as a glimpse into the past.The scenes depict stereotypes of the African-American race, bringing to light all of the falsehoods created throughout history. In her piece Insurrection! (Our Tools were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), slaves are depicted “in states of uncompromised physical pleasure (740).” Kara is able to use these large displays to depict scenes of “humiliation and violence with a since of elegant grace (739).” In the text book, The History of Modern Art, the author states that Walkers work is “typical of her generation, [in that] there is a readiness to complicate history with insights drawn from challenging the presumptions of the present (Arnason).”



Arnason, Mansfield. History of Modern Art. Sixth. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 739-740. Print.


"Kara Walker Mural." GWSS 1001 - Gender, Power, and Everday Life An Introduction to Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (Spring 2007). Web. 15 Feb 2010. .


Wilson, Flo. "Kara Walker- Biography." Kara Walker. 2005. Web. 15 Feb 2010. .