KARA WALKER’S SHOW IS A PAINFUL, NECESSARY REMINDER THAT US CULTURE WARS NEVER ENDED

 Walker’s drawn and collaged images depicting haunting scenes of abuse and violence refuse to let us look away from America’s bloody past and present.

Jessica Bell Brown

Kara Walker, “The Pool Party of Sardanapalus (after Delacroix, Kienholz)” (2017), Sumi ink and collage on paper, 125.5 x 140 inches (all images courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)

Atop Kara Walker’s large-scale drawing “The Pool Party of Sardanapalus (after Delacroix, Kienholz)” (2017), currently on view at Sikkema Jenkins, a mammy reclines; below, a group of young girls pull the entrails from a white man held down on the ground. Nearby, a hooded black male wields a shank against another black man, and a white man in a corset stabs a black male in the chest. On the outskirts of the composition, other characters are either oblivious, witnessing these acts, or simply turning away. Here, Walker adapts Delacroix’s 1827 painting, fixating on his depiction of the Assyrian king’s indifference to human life. Not dissimilar to Sardanapalus’s uncaring disposition, the work alludes to a 2015 incident in McKinney, Texas, where a white police officer, responding to a disturbance call about a neighborhood pool party, body slammed a young black girl in her bathing suit, and pulled a gun on two young boys who came to her defense. The cop, Eric Casebolt, not only used excessive force, his actions highlighted the denial of innocence to black children, who are criminalized early and often because of the color of their skin. Walker’s twisted, draconian pictures are a cypher for the present moment inasmuch as they skeptically obscure the possibility of alternative futures for our nation.

Kara Walker, “U.S.A. Idioms” (2017), Sumi ink and collage on paper, 140.125 x 176.625 inches

I approached Walker’s new show of figures sketched and collaged onto paper and linen with somber eyes and a growing impatience for spectacle. A prominent critic posted on Instagram that they felt “uncomfortable” being in the room, perhaps a desired effect of the artist. I shared their discomfort, though not because of a squeamishness brought on by white guilt, but because, quite frankly, like Walker, I’m vexed. I’m incensed. I’m fatigued. At times I’m almost too weary to look on. These feelings are all too familiar. Mere weeks after violent white supremacist neo-Nazis stormed Charlottesville, our president took a momentary reprieve from publicly shaming black American athletes for their peaceful protests of racism, inequality, and police brutality to throw paper towels at Puerto Rican citizens fighting for their survival after a catastrophic hurricane. Just days ago, a white American terrorist with easy access to automatic weapons slaughtered 59 people and injured hundreds more at a country music concert in Las Vegas. Feeling or acknowledging momentary discomfort is not a substitute for doing the work of dismantling structures, attitudes, and mindsets that perpetuate racism and inequality.  Minutes into seeing the show, I quickly realize my energies are better reserved in outrage for our country’s never-ending political quagmire. Walker is still the art world’s proverbial soothsayer, rabble-rouser, and provocatrice; her artworks are surprisingly less shocking than our national news cycles. And if her machinations, as some critics suggest, leech onto black pain, they also reveal the psychodramas of our current reality. As Jennifer Baker eloquently wrote for Electric Literature: “We need to better understand that the Black body is not simply a conduit that receives violence but also one that exudes beauty and complexity.” Walker obviously begs to differ. She continues to dirty her hands in the mud of US racial mythology, a job not for the faint of heart. I’ve reconciled Baker’s sentiment with my own desire to see more art that engages with black vitality, resilience, and perseverance. But yet and still, we must not look away…….

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