Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love

by Philippe Vergne (Contributor), Sander Gilman, Thomas McEvilley

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 using the paradoxically genteel eighteenth-century art of cut-paper silhouettes. Set in the antebellum American South, Walker's compositions play off of stereotypes to portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters, mistresses and slave men, women and children enact a subverted version of the past in an attempt to reconfigure their status and representation. Over the years, the artist has used drawing, painting, colored-light projections, writing, shadow puppetry, and, most recently, film animation to narrate her tales of romance, sadism, oppression and liberation. Her scenarios thwart conventional readings of a cohesive national history and expose the collective, and ongoing, psychological injury caused by the tragic legacy of slavery. Deploying an acidic sense of humor, Walker examines the dialectics of pleasure and danger, guilt and fulfillment, desire and fear, race and class. This landmark publication, which is sure to win international design awards, accompanies Walker's first major American museum survey. It features critical essays by Philippe Vergne, Sander L. Gilman, Thomas McEvilley, Robert Storr and Kevin Young, as well as an illustrated lexicon of recurring themes and motifs in the artist's most influential installations by Yasmil Raymond, more than 200 full-color images, an extensive exhibition history and bibliography, and a 36-page insert by the artist.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Essays, Race, Visual Art

418 pages, Hardcover

First published February 23, 2007

About the author

Philippe Vergne is the deputy director and chief curator at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Reviews

[Naima · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been totally facinated by Kara Walker (I guess I'm not all that original?) for years, and this book is so far amazing. The essays are fantastic, the plates with all of her works makes this worth every penny.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my review of the exhibition, see http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071210/schwabsky.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Katie Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only thing missing is perspective of how big these works are. I listened to Ms. Walker speak recently and loved her pointing out that the language of visual artists is visual not text, so the idea of trying to explain work or process can easily become muddled by that barrier.
Please will somebody write more about her collage work!!???

[Gina]

This was my Valentine's Day present. I am very excited about Kara Walker's silhouettes, so this is awesome. We'll see how the book is.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

She is so great.

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has to be the most brutal of Kara's body of work, the reference material and her interventuions in the beginning are incredible and intense.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting. Some good essays. Really aesthetically pleasing in terms of design and all that.