Kara Walker examines stereotypes and racial identity by drawing on the old-fashioned aesthetic of shadow silhouette cutouts. Her show at the Hammer Museum: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, sets out to tell the tale of sensuality and seduction lost in the shadow of African American history.Walker’s work is like walking into a life-size storybook scene of a perverted antebellum romance novel; the unabridged version of “Gone with the Wind.” Her paper cutouts portray scenes of sexual misconduct and manipulation that allude to many a sexually explicit act heavily peppered with historical metaphors.
These scene variations are utilized in a repetitive fashion, allowing all the scenes to seamlessly blend into one another as we walk the carousel of shadows. A most poignant silhouette is one of three women interlocked in a continuous chain of suckling, each woman breathing in the historical breast of the other. The repetitive nature of Walker’s scenes is indicative of the repetitive nature of history. In a bizarre sensual ritual the stereotype torch is passed from generation to generation, like mother’s milk.
Walker’s conjuring of these racial profiles of the past forces us to search for our racial identities of the present and future. Even as we walk through the exhibition, projectors on the floor cast our shadows upon the gallery walls and we are compelled to examine our own silhouettes and own places in history.
