Kara Walker received an MFA in painting and printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. Winner of a MacArthur award, she represented the U.S. in the 2002 São Paulo Biennial. The Walker Art Center’s 2007 exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love was her first full-scale U.S. museum survey. She is a professor of visual arts in the MFA program at Columbia University.
She was part of The Risable Visual: Humor and Art, a biennial co-sponsored by the Menil Collection and the Department of Art History, Rice University, Houston, Texas. Monday, March 14, 2011 where she gave a speech about her art, her history and identity.
I viewed her speech and found it to be very interesting and inspiring. She scrolls through her work and explains her thought process and talks about the meaning and connection that she has with the artwork. She expressed her beginnings in printmaking and how it was different from painting. Much of her work revolves around the struggle of Africans Americans in the 1800s. One thing I quite enjoyed was how she talked about redefining imagery through the lens and gaze of the self, how an artist can change or redefine the image to reflect the ideals, beliefs, experiences, and thoughts of the artist. She also discusses the desire to branch out beyond painting and printmaking. As someone who plans to create art in multiple different ways, formats and platforms, I found the speech to be very enlightening for someone who is journeying into the realm of mixed media.
Lightfall 