Kara Elizabeth Walker is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, printmaker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes. Walker was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 1997, at the age of 28, becoming one of the youngest ever recipients of the award. She has been the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University since 2015.
Walker in 2013
Visitors at Walker's A Subtlety. The white sculpture depicting a woman in the shape of a sphinx is visible in the background.
Fons Americanus at Tate Modern
" The Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts," etching and aquatint by Kara Walker, five panels, 1995, Honolulu Museum of Art
A silhouette is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouette is usually presented on a light background, usually white, or none at all. The silhouette differs from an outline, which depicts the edge of an object in a linear form, while a silhouette appears as a solid shape. Silhouette images may be created in any visual artistic medium, but were first used to describe pieces of cut paper, which were then stuck to a backing in a contrasting colour, and often framed.
A traditional silhouette portrait of the late 18th century
Goethe facing a grave monument, cut paper, 1780
Corinthian black-figure pyxis, 6th century BCE
Attic Greek black-figure Panathenaic prize amphora attributed to the Euphiletos Painter, ca. 530 BCE