Kara Walker

African-American artist Kara Walker (born 1969) has been acclaimed internationally for her candid investigations of race, sexuality and violence through the lens of reconceived historical tropes. She had her first solo show at The Drawing Center in New York City in 1994 and, at the age of 28 in 1997, was one of the youngest people to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. This publication documents Dust Jackets for the Niggerati--and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker, a major series of graphite drawings and hand-printed texts on paper that grew out of Walker’s attempts to understand how interpersonal and geopolitical powers are asserted through the lives of individuals. In scenes that range from the grotesque to the humorous to the tragic, these works vividly and powerfully explore the themes of transition and migration that run through the African-American experience. The accompanying essays take us through Walker’s saga of American experience--the dual streams of renewal and destruction that trace parallel lines through the last century’s rapid urbanization and the complementary emergence of a “New Negro” identity. Fully illustrated with reproductions of the entire series, and designed by award-winning design studio CoMa with Walker’s close collaboration, Dust Jackets for the Niggerati represents a major contribution to the career of one of our most significant and complex contemporary artists.… (meer)

Kara Walker is among the most complex and prolific American artists of her generation. Over the past decade, she has gained international recognition for her room-sized tableaux, which depict historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence and subjugation and are made of cut-paper silhouettes. She has an extremely realistic approach to society and the human race, and the core of her work are racism, apartheid, exploitation, gender issues, social injustice, slavery and the horrors that it created. Texts by Hilton Als and Francisco Calvo Serraller… (meer)

Kara Walker began this sketchbook in Munich in 1999, when she was 29 years old. Like most sketchbooks it served as a portal between the real world and the realm of her imagination. Although it was never intended to be shared, nevertheless quite a bit of “work” came out of this particular book, including the installation ‘Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)’, which is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum. However, that is an exception to the rule. For the most part the pages in this sketchbook reflect uneasy, unrefined, unfinished thoughts and anxieties, written and drawn with no objectives, no ulterior motives, and no filters.… (meer)