Kara Walker at Camden Arts Centre
Women artists are celebrated this season in London with a new solo show at the Camden Arts Centre of American artist Kara Walker. Walker lives in New York and is a professor of visual arts at Columbia University. It is her first major solo show in the UK. She is well known for her cut-paper silhouettes exploring dark and violent racial and gender themes challenging the viewers as well as for her use of black and white colors.
In the first room, three walls are covered with new cut paper pieces produced on site with mini narratives in which she is manipulating stereotyped characters drawn from American popular literature, culture and history. A white man playing golf near a black woman body, people running away, a white man carrying a rifle, a toddler with a bomb in his hand...On the last wall, one can see her triptych depicting apocalyptic scenes of destruction and suffering.
Large scale graphic drawings from the series " Dust Jackets for the Niggerati" are exhibited in the second room. Here again, shocking scenes of rape and torture are depicted in a chaotic drawing movement.The last room includes her video installation of her shadow play "Fall Frum Grace-Miss Pipi's Blue Tale".
An important exhibition to see until 5 January 2014.
