African / American

Kara Walker began working in the 1990s in an obsolete artistic medium, the cut-paper silhouette, which she radically transformed into a potent language to explore issues in American history and society, mainly related to slavery, violence, and sexual exploitation. In African/American, made as a printed silhouette, Walker depicted the solitary semi-nude figure of a female African American slave tumbling down through midair. The image is at once elegant and disturbing: elegant in form and compositional harmony yet disturbing in its dark and foreboding content.