Kara Walker received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and obtained an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. At the age of twenty-eight, she became the youngest artist to receive the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant Award for her large-scale black paper silhouettes cut and applied to white walls. Walker's silhouetted figures, often mural-sized, present ambiguous narratives that explore the intersection of race, sexuality, and violence. However, since the 1990s Walker has worked in several other media including video, installation, sculpture, painting, and drawing. Walker's oeuvre directs critical attention to the black body in American history and in art history, often recreating scenes from the Antebellum South through provocative and interrogating means.
Photo by Ari Marcopoulos