What kills me is the subject of today's post is something I've been wanting to cover those past two weeks. Finally got a free hour to do it. So let's rock this.
So right now through June the Hammer Museum in Westwood is featuring an exhibit by artist Kara Walker entitled "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" which is maybe my favorite title for a work of art since Dadaist Hannah Hoch's "Cut With The Kitchen Knife Dada Through The Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany."
Eh, Hoch actually might win the title competition. But Walker wins everything else. Check it.
This is Kara Walker being like "I'm totally hot enough to be a couture model, but I decided to be a culturally subversive artist instead, suck it!"
Since 1994, Kara walker has been creating room-length murals encorporating the 18th-century method of paper cut-out silhouettes into her work. She uses this antebellum method of entertainment/art to explore the inconsistencies of history and the subversive attraction/repulsion/even sexuality of racism. Though Walker is most famous for her silhouettes, the Hammer exhibit also features some of her shadow puppetry films, sketches, paintings, and collages.
Enough talking, let's get to everyone's favorite, pictures! Following, some of the images from the exhibit.
Enough talking, let's get to everyone's favorite, pictures! Following, some of the images from the exhibit.
Trust me, the exhibit is so, so freaking cool in person. You'll be in this big white room literally surrounded by this mural and you'll be looking around and at first you're like "Oooh, silhouettes are pretty." Then you take a closer look and you're like "Wait, is that an antebellum lady of the house snatching a baby right out of her slave's womb?" And then when you come to the Uncle Tom mural you're like "Wait, Eliza's about to commit cerebral seppuku with a giant axe and a little boy is being born out Uncle T's behind--- what the hell, Kara Walker?"
What the hell indeed. Walker creates these strange murals that combine seeming idyllic antebellum visuals with racial/sexual imagery of the most disturbing nature. I like this kind of postmodern art because while it's definitely more tangible than a cardboard box with a shoe hanging over it in the middle of an empty gallery, Walker never explicitly spells out the message for you. Through her images, occasional poems/ oblique letters addressed to the viewer printed on the walls, the viewer must piece through the exhibit and come to his/her own conclusions regarding the uncomfortably close connections between racism and sexuality, between the past and the present, and between their enemies, oppressors, loves, and themselves. Bad ass.
The Hammer is located at 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90024. Open Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat, 11AM-7PM, Thursday 11AM-9PM, Friday 11AM-5PM. Free for students every day, free for everyone Thursday, hooray!
Even though I've been sucking at keeping up this blog, please believe me when I say that I am now and forever...
Affectionately Yours,
Kit Steinkellner
