Kara Walker to Exhibit Elegant, Unsettling Artworks at Tang

The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery will present “Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress,” from Jan. 18 through June 1, 2003. An exhibition of selected and new works by the internationally acclaimed New York-based artist, “Narratives” was organized jointly by the Tang Museum and the Williams College Museum of Art. The exhibition showcases the work of an artist whose anti-racist parodies—rendered in exquisitely beautiful cut-paper silhouettes—have made her one of the most important young American artists working today, according to Tang Curator Ian Berry, one of the exhibition’s four co-curators.

A highlight of the Tang exhibition will be Walker’s appearance at Skidmore to deliver the Malloy Visiting Artist Lecture at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 31, in Bernhard Theater. Admission is free.

One of several contemporary African-American artists to address racial identity in a confrontational way, Walker is best known for life-sized black-paper cutout silhouettes that depict racial stereotypes, slavery, sex, and violence in the antebellum South. “Her charged and visceral imagery not only brings to light troubling episodes from the history of black and white relations in America,” said Berry, “but also highlights the problems of racism, sexism, and abuse that continue into the present.”

“The idea that African-American art can only be noble, appealing, and beautiful does not sit well with me,” Walker has said. “I have always been drawn to art that was unsettling for me.” Whether she is “on the cutting edge or over the line,” The Boston Globe noted, Walker is “one of the hottest—and most controversial—black artists in America.”

The artworks in “Narratives of a Negress” will span the artist’s career, beginning with her installation titled “Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart.” Described in Artnews as “lewd, provocative, and lovely,” the 50-foot mural has not been on public view since its debut in 1994 at the Drawing Center in New York City. Another highlight of the Walker exhibition will be “Negress Notes (Brown Follies)” (1996), a series of 24 small watercolors.

Several of Walker’s artworks have elaborate titles that harken back to 19th-century slave autobiographies, such as “For the Benefit of All the Races of Mankind (Mos’ Specially the Master One, Boss) An Exhibition of Artifacts, Remnants, and Effluvia EXCAVATED from the Black Heart of a Negress III” (2002). The wall-sized installation uses colored-light projections that illuminate the cut-paper images as well as the gallery walls and ceiling with brilliant color—and simultaneously project the shadows of viewers onto the wall, mixing them into the turbulent scene itself.

Additional public events related to the exhibition will include the following:

• opening reception, Saturday, Feb.1, 6:30-8 p.m.;
• noon curator’s tour, Tuesday, March 11;
• panel discussion, Wednesday, March 12, at 7 p.m.;
• “Dialogue” featuring cultural critic Michele Wallace and Skidmore faculty,
Thursday, April 10, at 7 p.m.;
• “Family Saturdays,” 2-3:30 p.m., March 22 and April 5; and
• guided tours, Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 1 p.m.

The Tang Museum is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, and closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission is free.

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