SCHIRN MAG
Raven Leilani breaks the boundaries between identity and history
By Ann Mbuti
Must-Read: What Raven Leilani’s debut novel, Luster, has to do with us and Kara Walker’s art.
The extensive exhibition presents over 650 graphic works as well as a selection of films
KARA WALKER. A BLACK HOLE IS EVERYTHING A STAR LONGS TO BE
15. OCTOBER 2021 – 16 JANUARY 2022
Kara Walker (*1969) is one of the most prolific US-American artists of our time. Her monumental, wall-spanning silhouettes and expansive sculptures, focusing explicitly and provocatively on racism, sexism, oppression, and violence, have made headlines. For the exhibition "A Black Hole Is Everything a Star Longs to Be" in the SCHIRN, the artist has, for the first time, opened up her extensive archive of drawings and is presenting about 650 graphic works and a selection of films. The fact that Walker works on paper is central. She makes use of the most varied styles, techniques, and references with great virtuosity. Her intimate sketches and notes are a site for the execution of graphic thought processes and also a means of satire and caricature, imagination and subversion. Walker relentlessly shakes up historical images, examining racism and sexual violence with radical openness and drastic imagery. In doing so, she repeatedly references historical as well as contemporary events—from the transatlantic slave trade to the presidency of Barack Obama. The artist makes visible the conflicts and traumas that persist to this day and ruthlessly negotiates the emergence of both the US-American collective and individual identity.
An exhibition by Kunstmuseum Basel in collaboration with SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT and De Pont Museum, Tilburg. Consulting for the exhibition at the SCHIRN by Contemporary And (C&).
