Kara Walker has never been one to shy away from controversy, and as her latest work will attest, the artist is not afraid to make audiences uncomfortable either. With two shows running concurrently in New York City -- 'Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale' at Lehmann Maupin Gallery; 'Dust Jackets for the Niggerati- and Supporting Dissertations, Drawing Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker' at Sikemma Jenkins & Co - Walker is once again flooring audiences with pieces that bring to mind the country's difficult history with slavery and racism.
At Lehmann Maupin, the exhibit centers on a 17-minute shadow puppet narrative about Miss Pipi, a white Southern woman who lures one of her husband's slaves into a tryst, though the young man attempts to resist. "Of the videos I've done, I've never focused or thought about the mythology around the white Southern female body," said Walker, who has incorporated film or video into her shows since 2004. "I was thinking about that caricature of white feminine purity, added to that, scenes of sexuality, desire, co-optation, love and the ease with which the body and all of those kind of goals can be destroyed."
The word "destroyed" is an apt description of what happens to all of the characters lives in the film. It is classic Walker - heart wrenching, eye opening and honest.
The Lehmann exhibit runs concurrently with Walker's show at the Sikkema Jenkins & Co gallery. There, Walker shows a vast, 43-piece collection of graphite works on paper and hand-printed texts, a comic book-esque tale of black identity and the journey from its rural roots in America to the "New Negro" identity in urban areas.
For Walker, both shows are consistent with her reputation as an artist who shocks-and-awes her audience, and who holds nothing back when she tackles difficult subjects such as womanhood and racism. But although Walker is aware of her reputation as an artist whose work gets people buzzing, she does not pander to audiences thirsty for controversy. "I can't really help it," Walker said. "I generally enjoy work that gets me in an uncomfortable spot, that gets me questioning my ideas, my beliefs or my allegiance to types of imagery, my thought process."
With the kind of name recognition enjoyed by few of her contemporaries, the former MacArthur Genius grant recipient makes an effort to educate the unfamiliar that flock to her shows. She knows the cultural pull of art exhibits, and the polarizing, yet broad appeal of conversations about race. Those two factors make her work somewhat accessible to a large swath of people -- the kind who may think a Kara Walker show is a highbrow date. As she says, her work operates on a variety of levels, often at the same time. "Some of it is very pop culture, populist, in the conversation around race in America as we sort of have and a part of it really isn't at all," she said. "A part of it is thinking about the nature of images and abstraction and high-flatulent nonsense that artists talk about."
Walker took trips down to the Mississippi Delta region to do research and find inspiration for these shows. However, 'Without Sanctuary,' an exhibition and book featuring lynching photos once distributed as souvenirs and postcards, also influenced her. "It was shocking to a lot of people," Walker recalled. "It stuck with me for a while because on the one hand, it got me thinking about the power of imagery and representation of black body, and the inherent violence of that representation, but also, it had me wondering what's my take."
Currently on display through June 4, Walker's take in both exhibits is brutal, something she's unapologetic about. Though she's aware her work draws the attention of art aficionados she is always aware that many fans of her work are not entirely fluent in the world of contemporary art. Balancing both can be tricky, she says. "I have a little populism in me, but I do feel it's misplaced sometimes."
She tells the story of a one-off puppet show she once did, and a woman who read about her in 'Essence' magazine brought her mother and her kids to attend. "I was like, 'I don't know if you want to bring your kids,'" Walker said with a laugh. "I don't even bring my kids."