Kara Walker - Camden Art Centre

In her first London solo exhibition, American artist Kara Walker brought together several important bodies of work across all three gallery spaces at Camden Art Centre

Renouncing the sensitivity that often shrouds the subject, Walker’s work critically and unapologetically interrogates underlying racial and gender tensions. Through characters drawn from American popular literature, culture and history, she exposes the myths that lie beneath cultural archetypes and the darker aspects of human behaviour.

Walker’s work reflects her research into the white supremacist movement and gun culture in the US. Peopled with subjects from both past and contemporary history, her work weaves together historical documents of slavery with more recent racial issues.

The exhibition at Camden Art Centre brought together several important bodies of Walker’s work. Dust Jackets for the Niggerati is a series of large graphite drawings, conceived as book covers for unwritten essays and works of fiction, which investigates pivotal transitions in black American history and the missing narratives of the black migration. Shown alongside a video installation of her shadow play Fall Frum Grace- Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale and intricately cut silhouette installations, the ‘wall samplers’, the exhibition addressed highly-charged subjects of repression, discrimination and sexual violence.

Connecting all of the work was an examination of power, racial myths and stereotypes. Using graphically simple and traditional media, Walker articulates suffering and violence within American history that continues to resonate in society today.

Images Related Events The Artist

Make & Do

Sunday 13 October (2013) – Sunday 5 January (2014)
(Every Sunday) 
Throughout the duration of the Kara Walker exhibition, families were invited to drop in to the Drawing Studio to make silhouettes, puppets and masks. Together, they gave these creations personalities and acted out stories in front of projected scenes. Taking inspiration from the way Kara Walker works, through these activities we asked big questions and made big statements about the world we live in.

Artists Jay Bernard, Evan Ifekoya and Raju Sachi Singh led the Sunday workshops throughout the duration of the Kara Walker exhibition.

 

Screenings selected by Kara Walker to accompany her exhibition

Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(Dir. William Robert Daly, 1852)

23 October (2013)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel and was the best-selling novel of the 19th century. The book and the plays it inspired helped popularise a number of stereotypes about black people, including the affectionate, dark-skinned “mammy”; the “pickaninny” stereotype of black children; and the “Uncle Tom”, or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress.

Including Kara Walker’s Six Miles from Springfield on the Franklin Road, a PBS documentary on the writing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the 1927 film adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic novel.

Sounder
(Dir. Martin Ritt, 1972)
27 October (2013)
Martin Ritt’s adaptation of William H. Armstrong’s novel follows a a black family struggling through life in depression-era Louisiana.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
(Dir. John Korty, 1974)
13 November (2013)
A story about the American experience told by a former Louisiana slave, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman spans over 100 years of southern history.

To Sleep with Anger
(Dir. Charles Burnett, 1990)
27 November (2013)

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
(Dir. William Greaves, 1968)
1 December (2013)

Borderline
(Dir. Kenneth MacPherson, 1930)
4 December (2013)
Influenced by the psychological realism of Pabst and Eisenstein’s montage, Borderline is a closely woven narrative of racial and sexual tension, moving between the boundaries of black and white, male and female and the conscious and the unconscious. Screened to coincide with Kara Walker’s exhibition and Mad, Bad and Sad at the neighbouring Freud Museum. The film was introduced by Karen Alexandre, Senior Tutor in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art.

Bamboo Memories
(Dir. Barby Asante. 2 channel, 8 mins 56 secs)
18 December (2013)
Barby Asante’s short film Bamboo Memories looks back on the legendary social club in Bristol which encouraged interaction between communities at a time when racial prejudices prevented the employment and social integration of the non-white community. Commissioned by Picture This.

Panel Discussion: Reinventing Identity and the Historical Narrative

Wednesday 20 November (2013)
Kara Walker’s work draws on material from sources ranging across literature, folk tradition, history and film to examine and reclaim the narrative of Black experience in America and the wider world. This discussion addressed some of these strategies and considers Walker’s work within a European context. Chaired by Achim Borchardt-Hume with Dr Deirdre Osborne and David Dibosa.

This Panel Discussion was broadcast live at thisistomorrow.info

Exhibition Talk: Jenni Lomax

Sunday 5 January (2014)
Jenni Lomax, Director of Camden Art Centre, led a tour of the Kara Walker exhibition on its final day.

The Artist

Kara Walker (b. 1969, Stockton, California) grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. She currently lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions have taken place at Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2011); CAC Málaga, Spain and MDD (Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens) in Deurle, Belgium (both 2008). Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; ARC/Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth (2007/2008). She participated in the 52nd Venice International Biennale in 2007 and was the United States representative to the 25th International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 2002.