8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America

2005 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Kara Walker

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In her masterpiece 8 Possible Beginnings or The Creation of African-America , Walker unravels just that, the story of struggle, oppression, escape and the complexities of power dynamics in the history following slave trade in America. Her use of contour and silhouette accentuate emotion with rigor, she reduces the narrative to black and white as gruesome acts of sex and violence address trauma, fear and suffering through a majestic play of shadow and light.

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Kara E. Walker is a monumental American artist whose work probes the tarnished history of race in America, as well as that of gender, and sexual identity. Walker works in sculpture, collage, mixed media, drawing, graphic imagery and moving image/animation. Her iconic cutout silhouettes sample fragments of folklore as well as recorded history, as she often shows stereotypical depictions of African Americans as portrayed in history books in shockingly graphic yet accurate situations. She elegantly presents a problematic past, seduced by the medium yet wrought by unsettled emotion.

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Colors:

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• oppression.n.01
• bondage.n.02
• history.n.01
• power.n.01
• injury.n.01
• violence.n.01
• abstract versus figurative art
• allegory
• collective history
• gender
• american
• social realism
• born 1969
• installation artist
• contemporary artist