The Fact of Fiction: Four Works by Kara Walker
September 25 – October 23, 2020
AUSTIN, Texas – This fall, Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin, and the university’s Visual Arts Center (VAC) will co-present an exhibition of four video works by Kara Walker. Organized by Kanitra Fletcher, Landmarks Video Curator, The Fact of Fiction extends the Landmarks Video program into the VAC’s Fieldworks gallery—an adaptive exhibition space where students and faculty strengthen connections to external audiences through collaborative workshops, exhibitions, pop-up studios, and other programming. On view from September 25 – October 23, the presentation will feature one work by Walker each week and will be supplemented with online resources and virtual public programs.
Kara Walker rose to prominence in the mid-1990s with her radical retooling of the 18th-century genre of cut paper silhouettes. Turning this genteel craft on its head, Walker created perverse, panoramic vignettes of stark figures—usually black forms against a white wall— engaged in erotic, racially-charged violence. With unflinching authenticity, they address both the history of American slavery and the persistent, residual racism of today.
In 2004, Walker expanded her practice to include film and video, propelling her wall-based works into new dimensions of time and motion. With hand-manipulated silhouettes set against the backdrop of the historical south, Walker’s stationary characters play out to their full, unsettling potential. In four works—Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions (2004); 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker (2005); …calling to me from the angry surface of some grey and threatening sea. (2007); and Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale (2011)—Walker fills the screen with fantastical yet historically inspired re-imaginings of the past. Each work speaks to the ways that the trauma of past events affects the present.
Exhibition overview:
Kara Walker entered the annals of art history in the mid-1990s by turning the genteel eighteenth-century genre of the cut paper silhouette on its head, shaping the forms into disquieting panoramic friezes. She creates intense, immersive environments in which starkly depicted figures—usually black forms against a white wall—engage in eroticized, racially charged violence. Her huge tableaus of perverse vignettes address the history of American slavery and the persistent, residual racism of today. As critic Hilton Als has written, “In Walker’s work, slavery is a nightmare from which no American has yet awakened: bondage, ownership, the selling of bodies for power and cash have made twisted figures of blacks and whites alike, leaving us all scarred, hateful, hated, and diminished.”
In 2004, Walker began producing films and videos, propelling her wall-based works into new dimensions of time and motion. The narratives suggested by her stationary silhouettes play out to their full, unsettling potential and illustrate historical traumas not experienced, but transmitted to later generations through stories and images. In four works—Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions, 2004; 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker, 2005; …calling to me from the angry surface of some grey and threatening sea, 2007; and Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale, 2011—Walker takes advantage of our distance from the antebellum era, filling the screen with fantastical yet historically inspired re-imaginings of the past. Each work speaks to the ways in which events that occurred in the past produce effects that continue into the present. We therefore connect to histories by imagination, projection, and creation, as Walker powerfully does so, shaping facts into fictions.
—Kanitra Fletcher, exhibition curator
Screening schedule:
Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions, 2004
September 25 – October 3
8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker, 2005
October 6 – October 10
…calling to me from the angry surface of some grey and threatening sea., 2007
October 13 – October 17
Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale
October 20 - October 23
Schedule your visit:
Visits to the VAC must be scheduled in advance. To make your reservation and learn more about updated visitor policies, visit the VAC website.
VIEWPOINT: A Conversation on Kara Walker
Join Landmarks for an online discussion of The Fact of Fiction: Four Works by Kara Walker. This event is presented in partnership with Art and Art History's VIEWPOINT lecture series.
The program will be moderated by exhibition curator Kanitra Fletcher and panelists include Stephanie Sparling Williams, associate curator for the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum; Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Hamza Walker, executive director of LAXART.
This event is free and open to the public.
Register at: www.landmarksrsvp.org.
About Landmarks
Landmarks is the award-winning public art program of The University of Texas at Austin. Its collection of modern and contemporary art celebrates diverse perspectives, featuring commissioned projects alongside sculptures on long-term loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By making great art free and accessible to all, Landmarks inspires thought and growth. For more information, visit landmarksut.org.
About the Visual Arts Center
The Visual Arts Center (VAC) is an artist-driven gallery space committed to supporting process-oriented work and providing a platform for emerging artists, curators, and educators to experiment, test ideas, and take risks. We aim to spark generative conversations about art and contemporary society through our exhibitions and public programs. As an experiential learning environment dedicated to confronting the most pressing issues of our time, we invite our community of artists, students, scholars, and audiences of all ages to engage in discourses on race, class, gender, and culture. Located on campus at The University of Texas at Austin, the VAC is open to the public and is always free. More information can be found at utvac.org.
Video stills (from left to right)
Kara Walker, Still from Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions, 2004. Black and white video. 8:49 min. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
Kara Walker, Still from 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, a Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker, 2005. Black and white video, sound. 15:57 min. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
Kara Walker, Still from ...calling to me from the angry surface of some grey and threatening sea., 2007. Video, color. 9:10 min. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.
Kara Walker, Still from Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale, 2011. Video, color, sound. 17 min. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.