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Emancipating
the Past: Kara Walker’s Tales of Slavery and Power
February 5 – May 29, 2015
University
of Maryland
1207 Cole
Student Activities Building
College
Park, MD
From David
C. Driskell Center press release:
The David
C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland is proud to present Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker’s Tale of
Slavery and Power. The exhibition features about 60 works; along with
Walker’s signature black paper cutout silhouettes, an array of prints, a wall
installation, and a video will also be showcased.
Kara
Walker is one of the most successful and widely known contemporary African
American artists today, remarkable for her radical engagement with issues of
race, gender, and sexuality, and for the media with which she pursues her
studies. Her work pries apart and examines the injustices that African
Americans have faced throughout the long and tumultuous history of the United
States. She explores power relationships in American society through the
vehicle of representations of slavery, race, sexuality, violence, and gender
set in the antebellum South. The works, which are inventive and painful, but
also satirical and humorous, were selected for the show to display the range of
approaches Walker has taken in exploring the legacy of slavery for contemporary
American identity.
Walker’s
selection of particular media is both aesthetically and conceptually driven.
Often using outmoded technologies or old-fashioned techniques, she draws on the
historical memory of her media, bringing her contemporary perspective into
confrontation with the artifacts of history. By looking carefully at a
selection of Walker’s projects in different media, this exhibition will
emphasize the interface between technique and concept in her work. Walker’s use
of historically inflected techniques investigates the question: “How is
contemporary identity shaped and affected by the imagery from the past?”
In an
early interview with the Museum of Modern Art in 1999, Walker speaks frankly
about some of the motivations for her subject matter and aesthetic: “[When I
moved to Georgia] I became black in more senses than just the kind of
multicultural acceptance that I grew up with in California. Blackness became a
very loaded subject, a very loaded thing to be—all about forbidden passions and
desires, and all about a history that's still living, very present.” Emancipating the Past, organized by the
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, from the
Portland, Oregon-based collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer, is illuminated by
both deep personal experience and rigorously researched history. This
multifaceted informing of her work makes her pieces both immediate and
overarching, both personal and historical, both accessible and unthinkable.
Professor
Curlee R. Holton, Executive Director of the David C. Driskell Center, adds:
“Kara Walker and her work represent a seminal juncture in the discourse on race
and the representation of the black body as art subject and object. Her work,
which has provoked passionate reactions in audiences around the world, has been
described as brilliant and original by the art establishment while some
audiences with a more personal investment in her re-imagination of historical
events claim her to be a constructed foil to displace a more honest and
penetrating critique of the racial history of America.”
PANEL DISCUSSION
In
conjunction with the exhibition, the Driskell Center presents a panel
discussion on Thursday, March 26th, 2015 from 3-6PM. Participants in the
discussion, titled “Emancipating the Past: Unchain the Future,” include Dr.
Michele Wallace, Professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY; Ira Berlin,
Distinguished University Professor of History, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, Assistant
Professor in the Department of American Studies, and Paul Landau, Professor of
History, all at the University of Maryland, College Park; and Schwanda
Rountree, attorney, art collector, and art consultant. Panelists will explore
Kara Walker’s imagery as a point of departure for discussing issues of slavery,
race, sexuality, violence, and gender, among others. Additional details will
follow. Programs related to the exhibition are organized in collaboration with
the University of Maryland’s Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity.
ABOUT KARA WALKER
Kara
Walker was artistically inspired at a young age by her father, artist Larry
Walker. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from
the Atlanta College of Art in 1991, and her Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode
Island School of Design in 1994. Walker’s artwork has exhibited nationally and
internationally at many prestigious museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of
Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem, both in NY, in 2006 and 2003 respectively;
The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA, 2004; and the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, CA, 1997, among others. In 2002, she was chosen to
represent the United States in the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil.
At the age
of 27, Walker became the second youngest recipient of one of the most
significant and coveted awards in the country, The MacArthur Foundation “Genius
Award.” Her works are included in permanent collections at The Baltimore Museum
of Art, MD; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art
and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, both in New York. Walker currently lives
in New York, where she is a Visual Arts Professor in the MFA program at
Columbia University School of the Arts, New York City.
ABOUT THE CENTER
The David
C. Driskell Center honors the legacy of David C. Driskell, Distinguished
University Professor Emeritus of Art, Artist, Art Historian, Collector and
Curator, by preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and
culture. The Driskell Center is committed to preserving, documenting, and
presenting African American art, as well as replenishing and expanding the
field of African American art. This exhibition is supported in part by the
Maryland State Arts Council.
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