black-on-white silhouette of a woman in a horizontal format; woman has short curly hair and wears a long bead necklace and large cuff bracelet on PL wrist; ribbons at woman's hips; long hair between legs (pubic hair or skirt material?)

%C2%A9 Kara Walker

African/American, 1998

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The Walter R. Bollinger Fundexpand_more  2009.21

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Kara Walker began working in the 1990s in an obsolete artistic medium, the cut-paper silhouette, which she radically transformed into a potent language to explore issues in American history and society, mainly related to slavery, violence, and sexual exploitation. In African/American, made as a printed silhouette, Walker depicted the solitary nude figure of a female African American slave tumbling down through midair. The image is at once elegant and disturbing: elegant in form and compositional harmony yet disturbing in its dark and foreboding content.

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Details
Title
African/American
Artist Life
born 1969
Role
Artist
Accession Number
2009.21
Provenance
Landfall Press, Chicago (now Santa Fe, N.M.), publisher; Private collection; (William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis, Mo.); sold to MIA, 2009.
Curator Approved

This record is from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator, so may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about this object, please email collectionsdata@artsmia.org.

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black-on-white silhouette of a woman in a horizontal format; woman has short curly hair and wears a long bead necklace and large cuff bracelet on PL wrist; ribbons at woman's hips; long hair between legs (pubic hair or skirt material?)

© Kara Walker