Kara Walker at the Whitney by Angelique Petropouleas
Posted on October 15, 2007
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As I waited for the elevator I saw a disclaimer stating that the Walker exhibition was explicit and violent. I wondered how bad it could possibly be? The elevator doors opened on the third floor and I saw the wall size installation. Without paying much attention to what it depicted, I thought to myself that it was relatively harmless. Was a disclaimer really necessary for this? I began to examine the different things portrayed and was left speechless. To my surprise that first installation was only the tip of the iceberg, and the disclaimer was the least they could have done to prepare someone for what was to come.
I walked through the exhibition and the feeling of speechlessness only grew exponentially. I didn’t know how I would be able to write something when I couldn’t even bring myself to utter a single word. I searched for one piece that I had any sort of comment on. I realized that part of the problem was that I found the exhibit a bit repetitious. Although I did enjoy the fact that Walker used a great variety of mediums to illustrate her point, I couldn’t help but feel as though it was the same thing repeated over and over. In some way I guess that was the point. I concluded I would have to write about my family.
Then, after walking around for the second time and deciding to leave, I stopped in front of Cut. The reason I was drawn to it was because I felt it was understated. It wasn’t as blatant as most of the other pieces and I liked that. The black silhouette of a woman clicking her heels together and flinging herself back through the air seemed to show someone full of tremendous joy. However, the slit wrists and puddles of blood told a very different story, of someone in utter desperation. Pleasure and pain. The duality represented by a single figure is astonishing. How could someone in so much pain, be so completely happy by what they were doing to themselves? The answer lies in the fact that while hurting themselves, they knew they were hurting the person who hurt them more.
For me this was the most horrific thing of all. Yes, endless unspeakable acts were depicted by Walker to show the atrocity of slavery. But the biggest crime of all is that people seen as nothing more than property were forced to take their own lives in order to cause their owners pain. This was the only way to finally be free, the only way out, and the only means by which they could hurt those who for so long had hurt them.
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