Kara Walker: 7 works

'The racist and sexist prejudices of the American people are a recurrent theme in the work of the Afro-American artist Kara Walker. Having grown up in the southern United States, her work tends to focus on the policy of racial segregation of blacks once rigorously applied.'

'Using the slightly outdated technique of the silhouette, she cuts out lifted scenes with startling contents: violence and sexual obscenities are skillfully and minutely presented. The outrageousness and crudeness of her narrations denounce these racist and sexual clichés while deflecting certain allusions to bourgeois culture, like a character from Slovenly Peter or Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.'

'Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, (Annotated), Kara Walker, an African American artist, depicts a runaway slave wincing in horror at his severed foot, which has been cut off as punishment. Walker superimposes his flat black silhouette (her signature technique appropriated from Victorian era portraits) over a greatly enlarged photolithographic print of a photograph by George N. Barnard.'

'One of Kara Walker's processional figures, cast in sugar.'

'The original figurines Kara Walker purchased on Amazon, upon which her processional figures are based.'

'Kara Walker's giant sphinx-like woman was sculpted from 340 individual blocks of styrofoam.'

'Based on plastic figurines she found on Amazon, Kara Walker's 15 processional figures were all originally intended to be sculpted from sugar, like this one.'