KARA WALKER (B. 1969)

Created in 2006, Kara Walker’s Untitled is a candid contemplation rendered in delicate watercolour and ink. Against the earthen tones of its eleven panels, Untitled continues Walker’s forceful exploration of sexuality and race by linking the black female body to the land. Although each scene is discrete and self-contained, formal motifs reoccur throughout to create continuous and poignant links: sinuous curves, brown hatch marks, flashes of blue. Walker’s works often take the form of murals, and she uses the linear format to narrate multicharacter epics of fused temporalities. Her practice is embedded within the long history of storytelling, and by rhythmically repeating figures and interweaving their stories, Untitled stages a visual chorus of colour and line. As the artist herself said, ‘There’s a place in contemporary American culture for African-American female truth telling. To tell it like it is or tell it like it isn’t or to tell it like you dreamed it up’ (K. Walker quoted in J. Belcove, ‘History Girl’, W, March 1, 2007).