In conjunction with the Walker Art Center’s newly opened exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) created a postcard project to encourage visitors to respond to Kara Walker’s challenging work. The postcard invites visitors to reply verbally or visually to one of three prompts:
- What are you suppressing?
- What does power look like?
- Retell a history
To weigh in on the exhibition and share your musings, pick up a postcard from the Bazinet Lobby and create your reply on the back. Responses will be selected by WACTAC and posted on the Walker blog.
Here’s what people have said so far:
Anonymous
Blue Delliquanti
Katherine Rochester
Katherine Rochester
Lynda McDonnell
Pearl Madryga
Raina Belleau
Conflict of interest? The post author included 2 of her own responses.
Comment by anon — 2/26/2007 @ 6:20 pm
Anyone’s welcome to participate, on-staff or off. Submit yours, and I’m sure it’ll end up online too.
Comment by Paul Schmelzer — 2/27/2007 @ 10:24 am
I spent a few hours at the Whitney the other night absorbing Kara’s work. Initially, at the viewing, I was aware that I did not know what I was looking at. In the night I awoke with an understanding of the work, at least for myself. Kara literally and figuratively illuminates the shadow side of being human. She acts as Medusa, allowing us to see who we are being in our individual and collective shadows - unconscious of the deep belief systems we hold which enslave us personally and collectively - in the eternal now. Our children watch on as we nurture and mate with our oppressor selves, thus perpetuating enslavement and oppression through the generations. But unlike the story of Medusa, slain by the “hero” who is too cowardly to look her in the eye and learn what it is that turns men to stone, we have the opportunity to see ourselves brutally clearly, and transform ourselves from both oppressors and oppressed to liberated souls liberating others, finally free to create reality through the archetypes of love, harmony, beauty, freedom, clarity, strength, flexibility and peace. The choice is ours - we can individually choose freedom, acknowledging our fear and pain, and choosing to live out of allowing all beings their processes, in love and appreciation for the sacred, or continue to perpetuate what continues to be the status quo, passed down to us through history.
Comment by Lisa Brick — 11/19/2007 @ 8:19 pm
I love your work. It speaks to me. You have made tangible what is contained by our collective unconcious. Thank you.
Comment by Susanne Reed — 3/30/2008 @ 10:48 am
Seldom has art set upon me in this manner: Van Gogh's "Crab on its Back", Goya's "Saturn" being two paintings that come readily to mind. Deep subjects that dare the viewer to look, and challenge the mind to explore.
But this, this is more.
In her works Kara Walker invites us in; the subjects, of which there are many, requires each viewer to find a place amongst the silhouettes of their own psyche.
Indeed, I at first timidly stepped in front of one projected backdrop before chuckling and boldly striking a pose (silly, yet profound). Was I only a shadow passing over or moving through her work? Given voice 'because of', or was this only me that I had been invited to see within this frame?
"Whose chains are these?" I kept asking myself again and again.
Kara Walker made me uneasy; made me feel, think, and examine more than just her work. I brought my own baggage to the show, and yet Kara somehow managed to rummage through it and hold up what I had in tow.
Comment by Robert Dollard — 4/7/2008 @ 9:42 pm