Kara Walker creates these elaborate shadows that are old slavery, plantation narratives, that depict the slave women hanging the slave owners, while the slave women give oral compensation to him (kindo wild, eh?)
check her out for yourself: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/walker_kara.html
Yeah, I love her as an artist she’s well spoken and quite a scholar but, Well, here is the question?
Should artist have a sense of responsibility to community if they are African American, and do Racially charged work?
(example : Kara Walker, Betty Sarr, Michael Ray Charles).
I think about the desensitizing of the slavery movement. If we as artist choose to address such issues then why ought we to create works that take responsibility away from so called white America?
" I'll buy this art, its funny, it pokes fun at how slave owners and racist individuals did and still do."
Christopher-Aaron...... O.k. I'm biased I need work that charges my spirit, the soul and the mind
not removes my guilt over the wrong thoughts that I may have had about a group of people that make me prejudice.
Personally I have experienced the police brutality, the racism, the targeting accusations about being or doing something that I did not (profiling), the job denial letters, the looks when you pass a woman of another culture and they clinch their purse, called a nigger growing up in at a private school where my sister and I were the only two African Americans in the school, the comments and all. But I am not creating racially charged artwork (as a continual body of work, to base my content on). And if I did why even today in the society that we dwell in would an artist try to pass through the minds of others that we are ok, and healing has already taken place? I believe whole heartedly that If you are a white American you should not be holding the burdens of SOME forefathers that wronged others in the onset of slavery in this country, but we stop being educated when we try to desensitize truth.
1 comment:
I know that we talk about Kara Walker everytime we get together. I still don't have a solid opinion about her work after all those discussions either.
I like it. It's thought provoking and funny and sad and sometimes disgusting to me, especially the sexual images. From our talks, Chris, you informed me of how she didn't really seem to want to discuss her work in a public forum and sort of "played off" the intensity of it and the responsibility issues, in comparison to someone like Betty Sarr. Walker's lack of wanting to discuss her work is her own business, and her flipant comments make me dislike her. Her work stands on it's own, which is good. She might be better off not presenting herself in public...of course she wouldn't get the money either.
She is married to a caucasian man and she probably feels uncomfortable talking about it or doesn't care about the racial aspects of her work or perhaps doesn't think it matters what she says or how she lives her personal life...it's about the images that she generates and deposits in society's realm. She is detached after it's made. At least that is my impression so far. It changes all the time.
I've never heard her speak in public as you have, so I'm only midly disappointed that she shuns responsibility for racially charged imagery. I totally agree with you that we as African-Americans who are descendents of a hideous practice and have been intrinsically scared in the eurocentric society of AMERICA, will react differently than European-Americans, who carry the burden of being the same "color" as evil monsters who thought up and participated in the money-making atrocity of slavery. Walker does seem in some way to want to make it easier for that segment of the population to consume, however I don't think I have ever seen a white person experience Walker's work with any ease. I don't think that she is desensitizing people.
I do get very very confused with the sexual imagery when she treats it humorously. That bothers me and I don't understand it. I don't know if it's because I haven't seen enough of her work to "get it" or whether I just really don't like that aspect of her work. Time will tell.
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