Kara Walker

Hola, rebellious artsy people! Kara Walker is a current artist whose work deals with African American oppression and slavery. She is most well known for using the medium "Pastoral" - large hand cut and hand painted silhouettes placed on stark white backgrounds. This form is all too fitting as the history of what she is telling would be unpleasantly gruesome for the physical realism of these events. The crisp shadows allow the viewer to fill in the often bloody details without the overwhelming presence of gore.
Walkers work has come to prominence for its creative beauty but also for it's uncomfortable relations between slaves and masters. The pieces often contain imagery of violence (slaves to masters, masters to slaves) but also the common sexual relations between the two. Walker also includes animal-human relations that are often held in the same regard. However, all the people. shapes and animals are black silhouettes unifying them to the same "level".
I personally find Walker's work hard to view. I am usually one for "Happy Art" or uplifting at least - Walkers work isn't that, but it's necessary and real . Her work is an unsettling look into the gruesome race-relations of America's grafittid past.

"These are images that lurk in the subconscious, and in her art expose contradictions and tensions of the race in America that have grown up over centuries of lies and insecurities, exploitation and vulnerabilities. Precocious and subversive, Walker's work provokes the catharsis achieved by public as acknowledgement of these suppressed histories and their effect on the psyche."
-Catalog; Walker's SFMOMA show.

-Nev