Kara Walker

 

Kara Walker is a contemporary artist who has dabbled in many forms of art but is best known for being a silhouettist. Walker's silhouette technique includes sketching out a series of characters and events on paper and then proceeding to cut them out to be placed amongst each other (as is displayed above). This technique allows Walker to create stories in her silhouettes that explore themes of race, gender, and sexuality. There is certainly a raw quality in her work that is both compelling and thought-provoking, her silhouettes are often graphic and leave little to the imagination. Not only is scale used to create the illusion of depth and space, it also serves as a guide to assist the viewer in understanding what Walker is trying to convey through her art. Walker repeatedly uses scale to differentiate class and ''exchanges of power'',
primarily between slave and master. Walker is said to have been inspired by a move her family made to the south in the 1980's while she was an adolescent. The popular novel "Gone with the Wind" is also credited as a source of her inspiration.