The Means to an End...A Shadow Drama in Five Acts

Kara Walker creates disarming dreamlike narratives of nineteenth-century slavery and African-American history. Using the silhouette format typically found in a white antebellum parlor, her dramas (tragicomic?) cajole us into confronting not only the past but the present. Her work is truly contemporary in its stark black and white elegance and yet it is not 'minimal'. Her work explores stereotypes without exploitation. Her work challenges historical memory rather than didactically recreates history. These are two of her earliest prints in small editions of 20 and 25. In 1997, about a year after she made these prints, she was the youngest artist to receive the prestigious MacArther award.