About The Work
Kara Walker's black silhouettes show characters and scenes grounded in race and the history of the black experience in America. Testimony is a photogravure from Walker's 2004 video work Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Fortune. Powerful, disturbing, and controversial, Testimony bears witness to the trauma of slavery that persists in contemporary culture.
Walker's exaggerated outlines of facial features, body shapes, and costume convey her subjects' ethnicity and comment on the way people are defined by race. "The silhouette says a lot with very little information," Walker says, "but that's also what the stereotype does. So I saw the silhouette and the stereotype as linked."
About Kara Walker
From The Magazine
- Interviews & Features: Oil, Gin, and Possible Collusion with Russia? Behind Some of the World's Largest Artist Grants
- Interviews & Features: Year in Review: Here Are the Most Talked About Artists of 2017
- Interviews & Features: Q&A: Meriem Bennani's Video Installation at The Kitchen Brings Moroccan Tradition to Digital Art
- Art 101: 6 Black Radical Female Artists To Know Before You See "We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85"
- Contributors: Creative Time’s Nato Thompson’s Favorite Works From NADA New York 2017
Photograph
Set of five photogravures.
22.50 x 31.00 in
57.1 x 78.7 cm
Signed by the artist.
About The Work
Kara Walker's black silhouettes show characters and scenes grounded in race and the history of the black experience in America. Testimony is a photogravure from Walker's 2004 video work Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Fortune. Powerful, disturbing, and controversial, Testimony bears witness to the trauma of slavery that persists in contemporary culture.
Walker's exaggerated outlines of facial features, body shapes, and costume convey her subjects' ethnicity and comment on the way people are defined by race. "The silhouette says a lot with very little information," Walker says, "but that's also what the stereotype does. So I saw the silhouette and the stereotype as linked."
About Kara Walker
From The Magazine
- Interviews & Features: Oil, Gin, and Possible Collusion with Russia? Behind Some of the World's Largest Artist Grants
- Interviews & Features: Year in Review: Here Are the Most Talked About Artists of 2017
- Interviews & Features: Q&A: Meriem Bennani's Video Installation at The Kitchen Brings Moroccan Tradition to Digital Art
- Art 101: 6 Black Radical Female Artists To Know Before You See "We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85"
- Contributors: Creative Time’s Nato Thompson’s Favorite Works From NADA New York 2017
- Ships in 10 to 14 business days from New York. Framed works ship in 14 to 18 business days from New York.
- This work is final sale and not eligible for return.
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