Project Description

Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who received her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design and currently teaches at Columbia University. Her work deals with issues of race, gender, sexuality, and violence. She is best known for black silhouettes like the one depicted here, but has also worked with sculpture and printmaking. This piece is a combination of printmaking and Walker’s well-known silhouette figures. The print in the background is an enlarged reproduction of a print from the Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War. Walker places these black figures onto historic Civil War prints to highlight the history of slavery during the war, which had been largely ignored in this print series. The Tredennick Art History Fund, established by Dorothy Tredennick, made it possible for the Berea College Art Program to purchase this piece.

Haley Boothe, Class of 2016

Object Details

Kara Walker
2005
2016.2.1
41 1/2"x55 1/2"
Offset Lithography and Silkscreen
Departmental Purchase with Funds from the Tredennick Art History Fund