#kara walker

Liz Markus, Celine

Every season, the CFA calendar from Wesleyan University is full of exhibits and musical performances that are so intriguing. I try to make it to at least one concert, but honestly, I could see something every month. They put together a fantastic program of professionals, alumni, staff, and students, and I’m lucky enough to live close enough to head to Middletown after a…

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‘Everything that I do starts with an effort in recalling who I am. Crawling through the clutter of who I am supposed to be; who somebody else thinks I am. External constructions of race and gender and height. The more clutter gets added to the pile from outside, the harder it is for me to get to the core of myself.’ – Kara Walker, 2014

Kara Walker was born in 1969 in Stockton, California and grew up in the South where her father worked at Georgia State University. She is best known for her works which explore issues of race and gender, the American Civil War and slavery.

Like much of Kara Walker’s work, this print titled ‘Restraint’ explores the experience of black slaves in the southern states of America before the Civil War. The female figure wears an iron bridle of a type that was used to punish and humiliate slaves, preventing them from speaking, swallowing, lying down or escaping. The silhouette style is characteristic of Walker’s work. It recalls a style of ‘polite’ profile portraiture that was popular in popular in Europe and America during the era of slavery.

For many European settlers, the voyage to the ‘New World’ promised opportunity and freedom. For enslaved Africans, the journey meant the opposite. In this print a slave ship is carried to shore by other-worldly hands. A plantation owner and a slave on land offer a glimpse of the life to come. Beneath the waves, the silhouette of a black woman brings to mind the many people who perished on the dangerous voyage. The beauty of the aquatint is at odds with the shocking subject.

Slavery was a key issue in the American Civil War (1861–1865). The Confederacy of southern states fought to preserve the institution and the Union of free states fought to end it. The contemporary illustration reproduced in this print depicts the aftermath of the 1864 Battle of Jonesborough, Georgia, which facilitated the Union’s ultimate victory. It is superimposed with the head of a black slave whose freedom depended on the outcome of the conflict.

Trace changing ideas of American identity over the past six decades in our major exhibition The American Dream: pop to the present(9 March – 18 June 2017).

Exhibition sponsored by Morgan Stanley. Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Restraint. Etching with sugar aquatint, 2009. © Kara Walker.

no world from An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters. Aquatint with spit-bite and drypoint, 2010. © Kara Walker.

Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated).

Offset lithograph with screenprint, 2005. © Kara Walker.