Kara Walker on the dark side of imagination

the pieces and somewhat the large installations are sort of disparate narratives or scenes or interactions that maybe are drawn on you know very sort of base you know nineteenth-century stereotypes of black characters pickaninnies or whatever and then characters that are sort of loosely designed around that but then are you know clearly my own identity my own hand or another sort of sort of trope but they've all been you know reduced to this this one thing this black paper my thinking you know you know if a person like me can you know find themselves making you know picking any Negro you know minstrel art meaning for it to be ironic there's still this kind of you know back handed cycle at play you know that that sort of undoes even my most sort of progressive ambitions which is that it can still can fall back into into familiar terrain my heart and and my art was was filled with a fair amount of sort of received violence or see you know some of it real and some of it sort of exaggerated the interesting thing for me in my work is how well how easy it is actually to how easy it is to commit atrocities I mean that's actually kind of what what the work is about it's just like if a girl like me you can think this stuff then what so I you know I have an uneasy relationship with my own imagination at the same time I'd rather make the work then hold it all inside and get and get strange

Channel: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Views: 32,778

Rating: 4.9248118 out of 5

Keywords: SFMOMA, modern, art, kara walker, racism

Id: o6t-S_DFxCI

Length: 2min 0sec (120 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2010