Tag Archives: Kara Walker

I trust my hand. If I go into a space with a roll of paper, I can make a work, some kind of work, and feel pretty satisfied. Kara Walker

I've seen people glaze over when they're confronted with racism, and there's nothing more, you know, damning and demeaning to having any kind of ideology than people just walking the walk and saying what they're supposed to say and nodding, and nobody feels anything. Kara Walker

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with. Kara Walker

The promise of any artwork is that it can hold us – viewer and maker – in a conflicted or contestable space, without real-world injury or loss. Kara Walker

I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress. Kara Walker

I know that in my family there are histories of violence that are internal family things and that are oftentimes dealt with internally. By internally, I mean inside the family group, but also partly inside ourselves. You know, self-hatred and hostility and rage and this cycle that won't break. Kara Walker

I don't think that my work is very moralistic – at least, I try to avoid that. I grew up with that sermonising tendency, and I don't think visual work operates like that. Kara Walker

I took a political stance early on, but I don't think my work is overtly political. I respond to events. Kara Walker

There was a manifesto in the late '60s/early '70s, and it basically laid out what 'black art' was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules – I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists. Kara […]

I guess there was a little bit of a slight rebellion, maybe a little bit of a renegade desire that made me realize at some point in my adolescence that I really liked pictures that told stories of things – genre paintings, historical paintings – the sort of derivatives we get in contemporary society. Kara […]