kara walker - shows how blacks were conceived on the south.
uses silouhettes to describe sterotypes. Blacks - empty - allows the viewer to imagine, interpret, and decipher the scene opposed to simply drawing everything out.
Similarly, photographer sally mann
Both kara walker and Sally Mann depict images that are controversial and taboo, yet each depicts a world that is real to them. Walker illustrates years of oppression, misconceptions, and racial tension with no intent to sugar coat any of it. Mann illustrates what she believes to be beauty, whether it be controversial or not. Both of these artists simply capture what is in their heart with no regard toward the viewers potential reaction.
Kara Walker uses silouettes to capture the past. When viewing Walker's artwork live, the viewer's shadow will also be cast into each of her sets, making the viewer feel as if they are part of the scene. Although Walker only uses silhouettes in her artwork, she is no where near limited in capturing what she feels.
Similarly, Sally Mann only produces black and white photographs. One may think she would be limited due to lack of color, but it her photographs are still able to capture all, if not more emotion than any color picture. Her black and white technique adds emphasis on''
"One might consider ways to raise up a different history in front of the present, ways to draw another image or give another form to what is visible and possible." - Philippe Vergne, p. 8)
"she rewrites this history, draws it, paints it, films it, from the people's point of view" Philippe Vergne, p. 8)
In Beats Me (p. 290, Walker), we are shown silhouettes of two white men, one shrugging while the other laughs in response to what appears to be a dead black figure in the background. This show a harsh reality, where the reasoning behind the dead body does not even remotely matter, and is instead a comical occurrence.
"Walker's art reflects and offers up for critique a collective, often disturbing past, which has yet to be culturally transcended" (Heusel)
Similarly, in a piece of work entitled Emancipation Approximation, we are shown a Southern Belle leaning against a tree, a hatchet nearby, and nine black figured heads scattered across the ground. Her hand gestures show no empathy towards the action of beheading these nine people. In fact, the Belle's gestures show she is bored or perhaps killing time. This shows the Belle's desensitization with the act of dead black's, and this piece of work is simply another daily occurrence
"black paper doppelgangers created to bring forth the dark side of the viewer's imagination and...responsible for dealing with the guilt that the rest of the psyche much repress" (Heusel)
"The images are not just a personal cathartic exercise, but also a social criticism of unresolved issues that continue to plague society." (Heusel)
"Walker is remembering an antinarrative that exists in a place before memoty and beyond it, always familiar, yet resoundingly alien." (Heusel)
"Walker's silhouette thus refamiliarizes her audience to the forgotten and repressed guilt over the trauma of slavery by visually unearthing those traumatic events. The audience then is both attracted to and repulsed by these life-size figures". (Heusel)
"challenge and resist specific conceptions of what constitutes proper artistic production on the part of a young, black woman." (Shaw p. 94)
"Walker embraces the body - its uses, abuses, indulgences, tolerances, constraints, and exultations - to lay bare the truth that the spectacle of bodies in pain, of bodies in ecstasy, constitues history."
" The convulsion of desire - whether for the familiar or for the Other - Signifies the mechanism of relationships and power dynamics between races, classes, and genders. Walker words to disrupt and debunk such structures as she stages the reenactment of an epic past in the arena of unleashed desires." (Vergne, P. 8)
"Whether used to signift one's social distinction or to identify a slave, the silhouette is in itself as inricate as Walker's overall project. It is beautiful and it hurts; it is here and now yet totally obsolete." (Vergne, P. 10)
Both artists do what they love and what they feel is art without worry of critique, and that is what makes them so great at what they do.
^ sally mann
^ get the facts (aka my opinion)
