Opening simultaneously next Thursday at Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., two of the more interesting galleries in the Chelsea art district of Manhattan, Kara Walker presents two exhibitions, "Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale" and "Dust Jackets for the Niggerati - and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker". The works in these shows draw from her own experiences in the Mississippi Delta, "a region," she says, "mythologized in song and popular culture but tragically depressing. I drove down to the Delta thinking about the terrors of Jim Crow and slavery, yet the silent indifference of the landscape and the economic stasis, lack of mobility, and the persistence of a racist memory in the area was what stuck."
Walker's recent works deal with the mythology surrounding racialized womanhood, Delta blues, despair, transition and migration, broken levees, southern sensuality, and the African American experience in the 20th century. Her objective as a storyteller is to examine the destructive effects of mythmaking and of art. Lehmann Maupin Gallery will present Walker's new video works while Sikkema Jenkins & Co. will offer a series of graphite works on paper and hand-printed texts.
Born in California in 1969, Kara Walker is a New York City-based artist who has gained international recognition for her candid investigations of race, sexuality, gender and violence through silhouetted figures. Her work has been shown in important institutions and galleries around the world; recent solo exhibitions were held at CAC in Malaga, Spain, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She has been recognized with some of the most prestigious grants and fellowships including the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, the Deutsche Bank Prize, and the Larry Aldrich Award. Her works can be found in prestigious collections around the globe including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Tate Gallery, London.
Kara Walker
21 April - 4 June, 2011
Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale
Lehmann Maupin Gallery
201 Chrystie Street
-- & --
Dust Jackets for the Niggerati - and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker
Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street
By Randy Gladman for The Ministry of Artistic Affairs.
