Episode 52: “I wanted to make art where the viewer wouldn’t walk away, he’d get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful.” -Kara Walker
Kara Walker has created art that is unquestionably provocative, challenging and thought-provoking. Her silhouette images present the brutality of slavery in a way that is both demeaning and beautiful.
Brooke talks with Jennifer Navva Milliken of the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, Washington about Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker’s Tales of Slavery and Power, which runs through November 27, 2016. Milliken gives a brief biography of Kara Walker and explains the challenges and rewards involved in curating this powerful and moving exhibition.
Kara Walker
African/American edition 22/40, 1998
Linocut. 44 x 62 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Photo: Frank Ross
Kara Walker
The Emancipation Approximation (Scene #18), edition 7/20, 1999-2000
Screenprint. 44 x 34 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Kara Walker
The Keys to the Coop, edition 39/40, 1997
Linoleum block. 46 X 60 1/2 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Kara Walker
The Keys to the Coop, edition 39/40, 1997
Linoleum block. 46 X 60 1/2 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Kara Walker
An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters: Savant, edition 19/30, 2010
Etching with aquatint, sugar-lift, spit-bite and dry-point. 27 X 17 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Kara Walker
Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated): Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough, edition 21/35, 2005
Offset lithography and screenprint. 39 X 53 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Featured Image:
Kara Walker
An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters: No World, edition 19/30, 2010
Etching with aquatint, sugar-lift, spit-bite and dry-point 27 X 39 in.
Photo: Courtesy of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
