Kara Walker - I wasn't a huge fan of this artist in a way, though I liked her medium and means of doing artwork. To surround a room with black silhouettes seems like there would be amazing interaction. Just imagining being in a space like that seems beyond interesting to the mind and eye, especially when you try to follow a narrative. However her concentration on the silhouettes having such violent images is a bit sickening and I wonder why. I mean in a sense I get what she is trying to say, but I do wonder if she's been able to move away from just portraying the fear brought by paranoia with maybe some hatred thrown in there.
I read an article that pointed out that when she moved to Georgia when she was 13 she experienced constant racism for the first time in her life. Before knowing this I felt a bit off by her. I questioned if she experienced an immensity of racism or something like that to make her dwell on this issue. I mean she has a right to just feel strongly about the issue, but the way she dwelled on it almost seemed perverse. You're just recreating these terrible scenes you've imagined, based off of real history perhaps, but she didn't witness it first hand. (I'm referring to the silhouettes of beheaded figures and such.) So she's dwelling on it, reproducing it, and almost glorifying it.
I guess these negative feelings could stem from the idea that I might even feel threatened by her in a way. Growing up I went to inner city schools that had primarily African American students. I didn't grow up with racism, I didn't even notice that our skin colors were different until around 7th grade when other students who were my close friends began to drift away or even turn on me because I was white. Then racism became real but only because I was on the other end of it. Maybe I'm just reminded by those students who would treat me badly using the excuse that I was white and therefore contributed to slavery in the past. (Which I think was ridiculous. They didn't know my family history and that was just an assumption and racism on their part.) But a lot of them acted as if nothing bad had ever happened to any race besides blacks and made me feel bad for terrible things people did before I was born who I'm not even related to.
But I did find an article on Walker in the New York Times and after reading it I do feel a bit better about her artwork. Here is a paragraph I especially found interesting:
Several African-American artists with careers dating from the 1960s publicly condemned Ms. Walker's use of racial stereotypes as insulting and opportunistic, a way to ingratiate herself into a racist white art industry. In 1997 one of these artists tried to organize a museum boycott of her art. Ms. Walker responded with a vehement outpouring of diaristic drawings titled “Do You Like Creme in Your Coffee and Chocolate in Your Milk?” Some are text-heavy, direct-address and issue-specific: “What you want: negative images of white people, positive images of blacks.” Others are angry, funny, obsessive notes to self, examining race, racism, her own racism, her rejection of it and her dependence on it from many angles and various personas. -- Holland Cotter
Doh Ho Suh - The idea of making a house you could bring with yourself to make yourself feel comfortable. Its a pretty cool idea and one that I would be interested in. Needing a comfort space a lot of times the idea seems very nice.
