Kara Walker For the Benefit of All the Races of Mankind [(Mos’ Specially the Master One, Boss). An Exhibition of Artifacts, Remnants, and Effluvia Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress II]

dimensione ambiente/dimensions variable

"For the Benefit of All the Races of Mankind [(Mos’ Specially the Master One, Boss) An Exhibition of Artifacts, Remnants, and Effluvia Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress II]" is a video installation, the long title of which reveals the evident inspiration of the artist from slave narratives. The work represents two young slave women who are walking cautiously one after the other, wearing a sort of yoke on their necks that culminates above their heads with a little bell, preventing them from proceeding in silence as the gesture of one of the two, silencing the other, would prefer. As in other works of the artist, there are a wealth of details that emerge from observing the scenes and that, in contrast with the pleasant atmosphere of the images, create alienated, suspended feelings.

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Kara Walker, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, The Renaissance Society), Chicago 1997. G. Dubois Shaw (ed.), Seeing the Unspeakable, the Art of Kara Walker, London 2004. P. Vergine, S.L. Gilman (eds.), Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, exhibition catalogue (Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Los Angeles, UCLA Hammer Museum), Ostfildern 2007. P. Colombo (ed.), In praise of shadows, exhibition catalogue (Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art; Istanbul, Museum of Modern Art; Athens, Benaki Museum), Milan 2008.

Foto Patrizia Tocci

Purchased from Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York

Installation