Kara Walker

Kara Walker is an American artist whose silhouettes, drawings, installations, films and monumental public works confront slavery, racism, sexual violence, power and the construction of historical memory. She became internationally recognised during the 1990s for large-scale black cut-paper scenes that adopt the apparent elegance of nineteenth-century silhouettes while exposing the brutality hidden inside American visual culture.

Rather than removing racist stereotypes, Walker exaggerates and destabilises them, forcing viewers to confront how violence survives through images, fantasies and inherited narratives. This archive explores her major works, artistic language and continuing influence on contemporary art, Black representation, feminism and debates surrounding monuments, history and collective responsibility.