kara walker
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Born in 1969, Kara Walker is a young African American woman who has established her place in the contemporary art scene. She deals with the "slave narratives that were never written" (Sheets, 126) using black paper cutouts. Her cut paper silhouettes range from small intense drawings to wall-scale paper silhouette cutouts exaggerating the grotesque history of slavery and race relations in America. The range of racial and sexual narratives that are provocative, alarming and often difficult to view and her works has earned a mixture of responses from the viewers. She was the youngest artist to receive the Catherine T. MacArthur foundation grant, the so-called 'genius' award at age 27 and was the featuring US artist at the 25th Bienal International in 2002. But her work was controversial enough to arouse anger of many viewers especially the African Americans.
The impression of her work is that she elegantly portrays scenes from African American plantation life; however, viewers soon become aware that sexual, violent, and scatological images are represented repeatedly in her landscapes. One of her most famous works, Slavery! Slavery!..