New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide.
Born in Stockton, California in 1969, Walker was raised in Atlanta, Georgia from the age of 13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1994). She is the recipient of many awards, notably the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997 and the United States Artists, Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. In 2012, Walker became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2015, she was named the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her work can be found in museums and public collections throughout the United States and Europe including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt.
Walker’s major survey exhibition, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, was organized by The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where it premiered in February 2007 before traveling to ARC/ Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the Art Institute of Chicago; Camden Arts Centre in London; and Metropolitan Arts Center (MAC) in Belfast. In 2014, Walker’s first large scale public project, centered around a massive sugar covered sphinx-like sculpture, was on view at the abandoned Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As a special project of the 2015 Venice Biennale, Walker was selected as director, set and costume designer for the production of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma at Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy.
Honorary RA
Born: 1969 in Stockton
Nationality: American
Elected Hon RA: 30 May 2019
Gender: Female
Preferred media: Painting, Printmaking, Illustration, Film making, and Silhouettist
2019 Hyundai Commission, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom.
2018 Kara Walker: Virginia’s Lynch Mob and Other Works, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ.
2017 Kara Walker: Figa, DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece.
2016 The Ecstasy of St. Kara, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
2019 Opéra Monde, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France.
2018 MoMA at NGV, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, May 11, 2018 – March 10, 2019; traveled to: Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL.
2018 Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; traveled to: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
2017 She Persists, A Century of Women Artists in New York, Grace Mansion, New York.
Black Box: Kara Walker & Hank Willis Thomas, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.
Kara Walker: Figa, Marta, Karen, ed. Athens: DESTE Foundation, 2019.
Kara Walker: MCMXCIX, Walker, Kara. Amsterdam: Roma Publications, 2017.
The Ecstasy of St. Kara, Smith, Tracy K., William M. Griswold, Reto Thüring, Beau Rutland, Kara Walker, John Landdowne. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016.