Kara Walker, "African American," 1998

Kara Walker, “African American,” 1998

As part of the University of Chicago’s Artspeaks program, Kara Walker will talk with associate professor of history Amy Dru Stanley. Click the link above for full details; tickets are $20 to general public, $5 to students with i.d.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 | 7:30 pm
Kent Hall, Room 107
University of Chicago
1020 E. 58th Street
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From the University’s website:

“Walker will reflect on her work in a presentation and dialogue with Amy Dru Stanley, Associate Professor, Department of History, who’s research and teaching focus on capitalism, slavery and emancipation, and the historical experience of moral problems.

Known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender and sexuality, Kara Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouetted figure. Her installations create a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violent acts upon one another. With one foot in the historical realism of slavery and the other in the fantastical space of the romance novel, Walker’s nightmarish fictions simultaneously seduce and implicate its audience. A 1997 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award and a 2008 United States Artists Fellow, Kara Walker’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Walker lives in New York where she is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.”

Claudine Isé