Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love

Introduction

There are different ways in which to think about performance. One can analyze a performance in the role of the art critic, attending to self-referential aesthetics—the qualities that give form to the work produced the quality of the performance as it measures against the artistic genre in which it is embedded, and the quality of the performers themselves. Cultural theorists, however, present a different view of performance, one based on the notion of performance as a signifier of cultural and social values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. In this study, the work of Kara Walker will be discussed in relation to her 2008 Show at The Whitney Museum and how it pertains to race relations in the US. The study will also discuss the reasons for creating the work and how she thinks the world will benefit from her work.

Discussion and Analysis

Social categories such as race, gender, age, sexuality, and ability can be framed as performative, and according to the specific context, they can be challenged, reconstituted, and transformed. Performativity refers to the ways in which subjectivity (i.e., one's own personal views, experience, or background that can be thought of constituting the self) is constructed through the norms of society yet is also a constant process of reconfiguration within existing social institutions, cultural practices, historical traditions, and power relations according to a specific individual. Performativity denotes a cultural convention that has come to define norms associated with a certain identity category (e.g., gestures, acts, speech associated with racial identity or with gender identity); thus, performativity becomes the manifestation of acts that are associated with certain identities. Identity, however, is never fixed because language, gesture, habits, and other acts are part of a social practice that is interpreted at an individual level; discourses and actions are situated within power relations and remain open for reconfiguration of alternative identities.

A wide range of artists have explored race identity through art-making practices. Perhaps a challenge to the concept of performance is the fact that many visual art pieces are spatially and visually static as opposed to moving and temporal—qualities that have traditionally marked the performing arts. Performance in visual art refers to the extent to which the subject matter, materials, and context of an artwork represents and, in effect, performs certain issues such as identity in interaction with the viewer. An example can be found in the work of Kara Walker. Through the use of silhouette, an art form directly associated with Victorian art, Walker's artwork explores race, gender, and sexuality by subverting the concept of portrait profile through cutouts of disturbing images that evoke the antebellum South, Black stereotypes, violence, and sexuality. In one of her works, Darkytown Rebellion, the artist uses overhead projectors that project colored light onto the ceiling, walls, and floor of the exhibition space, which overlay her posted silhouetted figures. This work is performative in several ...