Kara Walker

Several video works add movement and sound to Walker´s narratives. One titled 8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-American, a Moving Picture by Kara E. Walker (2005) presents the story of African-Americans in the new World from a variety of perspectives. Walker´s inspiration was the 1946 Walt Disney film Song of the South, shadow-puppet play rather crudely manipulated by a mostly off-camera puppeter, Walker re-creates the story of the Middle Passages as slaves are hoisted overboard, only to be swallowed by a giant African goodes who has morphed out of a nearby island. They tumble through her instentines and are excreated into a new world. A black man born of this pile of feces becomes King Cotton and stars in a fantasy scenes of salves dancing in the fields. This vignette culminates with the male master and female slave having sex, an act that impregnates King Cotton. Following several other episodes, the work concludes with a sinister Uncle Remus and a lynching scenes. Each of the little stories is ironically counterpointed Burneded by a Good Intentions (2004), features explicit role reversals: the slaves on the plantation seize power and proceed exactly as would their white couterparts, complete with a sear for white escapees, interracial sex and the lynching of black heroine´s white lover.
By Eleanor Heartney, art in america, october 2007.