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Media Gallery
Since winning the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" fellowship in 1997, Kara Walker (b.1969) has garnered acclaim for her signature work with black cut-paper silhouettes. Subverting the twinning associations of shadows and silhouettes, Walker creates tableaus that stage alternative episodes from the African-American experience.
Selected Works
"8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture", 2005 by Kara Walker, American, b. 1969, film still, 193.2009
"8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture", 2005 by Kara Walker, American, b. 1969, film still, 193.2009
About
Since winning the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" fellowship in 1997, Kara Walker (b.1969) has garnered acclaim for her signature work with black cut-paper silhouettes. Subverting the twinning associations of shadows and silhouettes, Walker creates tableaus that stage alternative episodes from the African-American experience. In the film 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, from 2005, she revisits the historical institution of slavery with eight starkly uncensored vignettes. At times silent, accompanied by minstrel music, and offset by the recorded voice of the artist's young daughter, these episodes depict a terrain dominated by the wrenching violence of the unexpected.