22 Things You Didn't Know About Kara Walker

Here are some little-known facts about the life and work of Kara Walker.

Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Kara Walker has taken the art world by storm by rejecting artistic convention and creating her own rules. The New York-based artist has changed the way we approach race and gender in art in her exploration of identity, racism, and sexism. She does not shy away from difficult subject matter such as violence or stereotyping, even if critics have called her work shameful. The critical reaction is intentionally part of her message; she says, “My works are erotically explicit, shameless. I would be happy if visitors would stand in front of my work and feel a bit ashamed—ashamed because they have…simply believed in the project of modernism.”

Walker's first large-scale solo project will take place at the to-be-demolished Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn from today through July 6, 2014. She has titled the show, "At the behest of Creative Time, Kara E. Walker has confected A Subtlety, or The Marvelous Sugar Baby an homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant." The show will be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays and admission is free, so you if you're in N.Y., you have no reason to miss it.

Here are 22 Things You Didn't Know About Kara Walker.

She is the second youngest recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's genius grant, which she was awarded at the age of 27.

Many people, particularly older black artists, who felt that Walker's art reinforced racial stereotypes, were upset at her prestigious award and the accompanying recognition. In response, a letter writing campaign, lead by Betye Saar, formed to protest the display of Walker's art in public galleries.

She says that the first 13 years of her life, while she lived in Northern California, were free of any thought of race.

"I'd been protected from considerations of race," she says. Walker first noticed racial tension when she moved to Atlanta as a teenager. Her family lived in an area of Ku Klux Klan revival during the Atlanta Child Murders, where 29 black children were killed in three years.

She chose the silhouette form partially to make a statement about how she felt excluded from the fine art world.

She was told by her professors to make "identifiably black" art. "The silhouette says a lot with very little information," Walker has said, "but that's also what stereotype does."

She writes on a typewriter, not a laptop.

She says, "I like the clackety-clack of the typewriter. It's as if it answers. There's a thought, and you put it down, letter by letter, and it answers back."

Titles are very important to her work, almost as important as the visual aspect. Her favorite title of an artwork that she's done is Two Competing Suns and the Imposter.

She also likes, The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableaux of Eva in Heaven. The gradiose titles are meant to be tongue-in-cheek. She says, "I always really liked that P.T. Barnum-style chutzpah of announcing a show in New York. Especially at that time, I realized one could say anything and people believed this fiction up to a point, so why not just say: I am an amazing Negress of Noteworthy Talent!"

She has a special interest in anonymous artists because of the mystery surrounding their work.

Her 2001 installation, Darkytown Rebellion, was inspired by a bizarre painting by an anonymous artist named Darkytown that Walker saw in a collection of work by untrained artists.

Much of her art has been constructed from the viewpoint of "Kara Elizabeth Walker, an emancipated Negress and a leader in her cause." She has also gone by many other names.

She has often taken on that character as an alter ego to explore how she would have created art if she had lived 150 or 200 years ago.

She feels a certain kinship with Mark Twain.

She says, "I sometimes conjure up imaginary conversations with him about his characters, their frankness." Walker also identifies strongly with Andy Warhol.

She has never censored her art from her daughter.

When Octavia was four years old, she said "Mommy makes mean art." Walker was nervous about the influence of her art on her daughter at first, but she has come to consider Octavia, now 17, her best critic.

The first piece of art that she can remember strongly impacting her is Christian Schad's.

Walker saw a painting by Schad at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 1987. She says, "I remember seeing this history of German art, and thinking, 'They hate themselves, they hate the world, and they hate painting.' The whole thing was just so fraught with urgency and rage, and somewhere underneath all of that, a kind of—it can't be called love—passion. I thought, That's what I want to do."

She is mostly influenced by literature, particularly "bad romance novels and porno."

She believes that debased forms such as these both reveal human nature and construct cultural paradigms.

She decided to become an artist when she was three and was inspired by her father, who is also an artist.

She says, "Because of him, I've gained a desire to have an imagination, which was never very easy for me...[and] was epitomized by being able to fantasize about traveling in time. But I could never really fully imagine myself doing that, because there was always some bit of brutality, some little hint of reality, that prevented me from getting very far..."

Her mother walked out of a showing of her explicit film Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pippi's Blue Tale.

The film's narrative includes physical and sexual violence in the form of a puppet show. Walker says that both of her parents display skepticism towards the extreme nature of her artwork.

She has no assistants and does all of the work to install her exhibitions by herself.

Walker doesn't completely plan installations before she enters the display space, so assembly improvisation is an important part of her creative process. In an interview, she said, "I'm also very sensitive to pent-up racist accusations of laziness. I'm subtly amused by those existing narratives by former slaves which begin with testimonials as to the literary integrity of the author—'written by Herself,' and the like—and I often wonder if that same sentiment informs some of the folks who say they like what I do."

Toni Morrison once wrote her a letter, which she has framed.

In 1997, Walker created a pop-up book for the Peter Norton Family Christmas Art project. Toni Morrison received one and wrote her a thank you note on her personal stationary.

She describes herself as an optimist, but one tempered by terror.

She says, "Well, what looks like anger manifests in the work, with bodies hurting each other, is often a metaphor for the creative act. I think that I'm tremendously optimistic, and that's another thing that drives the work, my ability and desire to say everything at once. But I worry that all of my optimism is sadly tempered with terror..."

In the 1990s, she gave up painting to avoid the legacy of white male patriarchy over the medium.

In order to escape the conventions surrounding painting, Walker turned to her chosen medium of paper silhouettes, which allowed her to establish her individual tradition. She found that the art world's expectations of painters were entrenched in a sexist and racist tradition. She says that she told herself, "You have to stop painting. You cannot paint."

A former professor of hers claims "that shyness had once left her close to silent."

The professor, Michael Young, was influential in Walker's development as an artist. Because she is highly intellectual, he advised her not to neglect the aesthetic effect of her artwork in an effort to be conceptual.

She is drawn to the carnivalesque and has a wicked sense of humor.

She says, "In many ways, by not taking the Art World very seriously, I inadvertently became a serious artist."

She does much of her art through free association, trusting her subconscious to bring together and visualize the topics and issues she researches and thinks about.

She says, "A lot of it comes directly from that kind of 'play,' if you will, that is the result of free association. So you can see why a lot of the stuff that I do surprises even me. I mean, if this stuff is even in my head, then it must be in other people's."

At the beginning of her artistic career, she gained inspiration from kitsch and racist knick-knacks that she found when browsing flea markets.

Walker has a collection of antique postcards and objects that represent stereotypes about sex and race. They serve as a historical survey of how society's unconscious impressions have evolved over time. "...I started going to these antique markets. There was something thrilling also about going to these spaces where even though I feel pretty OK about myself, when I find myself in the places where a black girl is not expected to appear, it feels uncanny. Especially if you browse in the section: 'Black.' So I would buy a few things here and there..."