kara walker
“There’s no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.”
One of the youngest recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship at age 28, Kara Walker is known for her large-scale work, most often taking shape as black-and-white collages of silhouettes amidst pastoral scenery. She explores the “raw intersection of race, gener, and sexuality” through scenes that require some sort of reaction from the viewier. “I didn’t want a complete passive viewer,” she says. “Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would gigle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful.”
Read more about Kara and view her work on Artnet.com.