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What Does Kara Walker Mean By Cut Paper Silhouettes?

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Kara Walker is an accomplished black female artist who explores race and gender issues through the historical impact of slavery in a dark manner. She has a distinctive style that utilizes sharp value contrasts between black and white hues that highlight the racial thematic aspect of her artwork. She uses cut paper silhouettes as her medium of choice, popular during antebellum period and lacking an elegant connotation, they were seen as a form of craft. Famous for her cut paper silhouettes and lithograph prints, Walker unapologetically depicts black figures that are reminiscent of minstrel figures in a confrontational way not meant to comfort the viewer. Restraint is a lithograph print created in 2009 that depicts the profile of a black figure …show more content…

Walker chooses to depict black figures using racist minstrel era characteristics as a tongue in cheek critique intended to shock (Cameron 11). Hamza Walker’s journal Kara Walker: Cut It Out implies that not only does Kara Walker intend to shock as Cameron suggested, but that she also wants to remind viewers of the “...dark picture of human nature by calling into question the idea of moral progress” (109). Hamza Walker begins her journal with a quote by James Baldwin that notes that “the horror is also the past”, indicating that dark pasts and natures cannot and should not be forgotten (108). American society as a whole, but specifically white American culture is built on this notion that we live in a post-racial America, and would claim that Kara Walker’s work is unhelpful, that bringing up discussion about race is inherently racist. Those made uncomfortable by Walker’s work that aren’t people of color, are being forced to acknowledge their history; that it was extremely likely that even if their ancestors did not actively participate in the enslavement of and lack of rights for black people, they benefited from this system. Walker’s art is easily misinterpreted by white audiences who are unaware that they are the ones meant to be challenged by this work, and instead

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