Kara Walker on the dark side of imagination
About this video
Artist Kara Walker describes how her black cut-paper scenes draw on 19th-century stereotypes of Black people mixed with her own identity. She reflects that even ironic use of these stereotypes can fall back into familiar terrain, and that her work is about how easy it is to imagine atrocities. She has an uneasy relationship with her imagination but would rather make the work than hold it inside.
You'll be able to
- describe the materials and sources Kara Walker uses in her work.
- explain why Walker worries that using stereotypes, even ironically, can backfire.
- explain what Walker means by an 'uneasy relationship' with her own imagination.
Key words
- Stereotype
- An oversimplified and often harmful image of a group of people.
- Minstrel art
- Racist 19th-century entertainment and imagery that mocked Black people.
- Ironic
- Meaning the opposite of what is shown, often to criticize it.
- Atrocity
- An extremely cruel or violent act.
Transcript
I guess all of the pieces, and somewhat, the large installations, are sort of disparate narratives or scenes or interactions that maybe are drawn on a very sort of base, you know, nineteenth century stereotypes of black characters, picaninnies or whatever, and then characters that are just sort of loosely designed around that, but then are, you know, clearly my own identity, my own hand, or another sort of, sort of trope But they've all been, you know, reduced to this, this one thing, this black paper My thinking is if a person like me can find themselves making, you know, picaninny negro, you know, minstrel art, meaning for it to be ironic, there's still this kind of, you know, back-handed cycle at play,
you know, that sort of undoes even my most sort of progressive ambitions, which is that it can still kind of fall back into familiar terrain My heart and, and my art was filled with a fair amount of, of sort of received violence, you know, some of it real and some of it sort of exaggerated The interesting thing for me in my work is how well, how easy it is, actually, to how easy it is to commit atrocities I mean, that's actually kind of what the work is about It's just like if a girl like me can think this stuff, then what?
So I have an uneasy relationship with my own imagination At the same time I'd rather make the work, than hold it all inside and get strange
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