Peachy the Magazine August September 2014 | Page 96

Caricature and Social Activism
Walker was a provocative artistic
wunderkind, winning the MacArthur
Foundation “genius” award at the age
of 24 with her breakout work Gone.
Subsequently major museums across
the globe were clamoring to obtain
her signature panoramic installations
of the antebellum South which look
charming, even saccharine, upon first
glance, yet turn monstrous upon further viewing. The works are vignettes
of the slave master and the female
slave, and acts of violence and rape
abound. Presented as silhouettes in
black and white, it is as if these works

cast some Rorschachian spell, forcing
one to flip back and forth between the
past and the present, of what one wants
to see and what one is actually seeing. 
The theme of Walker’s career has been
exploring the manner in which AfricanAmerican women have been exploited,
manipulated, mutilated and objectified,
and the Sugar Baby certainly appears
to be on theme, but there is a distinct
shift here which is unrelated to the
change in medium. The work does
explore two stereotypes which have
perpetually plagued black women and

Installation view: Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppr W76