Kara Walker, Camden Arts Centre

Camden Arts Centre’s newest exhibition delves into the legacy of racial and sexual violence in America’s Deep South, in a provocative silhouette collection by acclaimed artist Kara Walker. 

The archly-titled ‘We at Camden Arts Centre are Exceedingly Proud to Present an Exhibition of Capable Artworks by the Notable Hand of the Celebrated American, Kara Elizabeth Walker, Negress’ is her first major UK show.

Walker’s family moved to Atlanta (Georgia) – a hotbed of 20th century racial tensions and one of the major seats of the civil rights movement in the 1960s – when she was 13. Her silhouettes, with all their connotations of a genteel drawing-room pastime, depict the dark truths beneath the cultural identity of America’s heartland, and at the same time provide a powerful meditation on the notion of ‘profiling’.

Her casts of characters, consisting mainly of fairytale-esque black figures on white backgrounds, feature bayonet-wielding plantation overseers looking down on chain-bedecked slaves, flailing black children with staffs through their necks and crinolined ladies with blood spurting from their wrists.

The exhibition takes up all three galleries, and in doing so presents a survey of Walker’s work from the large-scale graphite drawings in her Niggerati series – conceived as book covers for unwritten literary works inspired by the 1920s Harlem Renaissance – through to new paper pieces made for the gallery in the course of her residency. 

We were particularly spellbound by the video-installation playing Walker’s shadow-puppet show Fall Frum Grace- Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale, which sees her characters come to sinister, fairground-esque life.

This is truly challenging, mind-expanding stuff – an absolute must-see.

Ticket Price: FREE