Description:
Silhouette of a nude woman or girl, standing facing with head turned to the left and wearing curled, pointed shoes. Her right leg is dismembered and is carried on the back of a tiny, Atlas-like figure in the lower left corner. The silhouettes are printed over an image of a woodland area littered with debris, including a wagon wheel and a sign attached to a tree in the center.
Label Text:
Contemporary artist Kara Walker’s work reminds us of the inherent subjectivity of historical perspective. This work is one of 15 prints belonging to Walker’s powerful series in which she enlarges selected images from two volumes of Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (1866–68) and then “annotates” them by superimposing her signature silhouettes, thereby disrupting the original narrative. Walker inserts issues of racial stereotypes, slavery, gender, and the violence of oppression otherwise absent in these mid-19th century representations.
-Ellen Alvord, Weatherbie Curator of Education and Academic Programs, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum (Sept. 2016)
Tags:
diaspora; slavery; African American Subjects:
Silk; screen prints; Lithography; Slavery; African American art Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+2012.14.14 |
