Kara Walker Biography

The themes of US Kara Walker’s art incorporate race and sex. Her extensive wall mural in the 1990s “Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart” was created by paper silhouettes, which Walker arranged into a broad story arc illustrating the history of the American South. It is a subversive style she has repeated since. At the time, her work was condemned as obscenely offensive. Walker continues to make bold, challenging statements that demand the examination of inequality, particularly racism in the US today.