Kara Walker: Bureau of Refugees

by Kara Walker

After the success of the recent touring exhibition My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love , Kara Walker's silhouetted cut-out figures are a now-familiar but still pungent presence in contemporary art, reenacting uncomfortable, often violent episodes in American race relations and reprising, in their formal simplicity, the ways in which marginalized identities are reduced and distorted into readily legible, caricatured forms. Walker's art continues, in other words, to pose awkward questions straightforwardly. Her imagery derives from the visual language of the antebellum South and the tradition of the minstrel show, which she directs to more disquieting ends. Where her source material parodied African-American culture with a terrifyingly casual jocularity--permitting white Americans to vicariously transgress their own taboos by depicting social chaos and unbridled sexuality--Walker applies that jocularity to her depictions of violence against African-Americans, lending them a hollow, almost slapstick character that is very much at odds with their original function. This latest book features work from a new series that addresses, among other themes, the atrocities committed against former slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Reconstruction program implemented by Congress between 1866 and 1877. These narratives are elaborated into or against geometric scenarios more abstract and compacted than previous sequences by Walker, and with a more extensive use of color.

Genres: Art

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ioana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Rich poor kids. Money congeals into little postules of Privilege and Blame... freed Blacks accomplish more by appeasing their torturers/ washing collected sin" ~ Kara Walker

Poet, visual artist, researcher, feminist, Kara Walker is by far one of the most brilliant American artists imho; this collection of works was inspired by a National Archives file, "Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands," and poignantly, tragically, ironically, and disturbingly portrays the injustice and atrocity of racism, slavery, political disenfranchisement, rape and crimes against black women, lynchings and hate crimes, and other acts perpetuated through hateful ignorance on the black community in the U.S. All works in this collection are either paintings or her famous cutouts, but most paintings are of vivid, heartbreaking, unsettling and compelling poetry inspired by historical documents.

[Terence · Rating 5 out of 5]

The text components and the images are really striking where they engage in a history about the US War Department's Bureau and the list of potential titles is horrifying and full of insight. So glad I piked this book up, it differs enough from Walker's other works but has a fire to it with the brief list/texts that really stun.

[Phil Overeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ironman Tate and Nicole Overeem were right.