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Looking Anywhere But At You: The Gaze in Kara Walker's Silhouettes
- Author(s):
- Charles Gleek (see profile)
- Date:
- 2017
- Group(s):
- MS Visual Culture, TM Literary and Cultural Theory
- Subject(s):
- African American art, African Americans--Social life and customs, American literature--African American authors
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- kara walker, post soul aesthetic, African-American art, African American culture, African American literature
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M62R70
- Abstract:
- The silhouetted cutouts in Kara Walker's Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b'tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart are fine with being seen but care little for the actual presence of the viewer. They're kissing and sucking, fucking and birthing, playing and pillorying all without shame or service to the viewer. Walker’s image depicts bodies, not as objects for gazing upon, but are subjects which look back or better yet look away from the viewer. Read this way, the figures in Walker’s work serve to disrupt the viewer’s perspective and meaning of race, and in turn represent the shifting complexity and diversity of contemporary African American identity, all through a gaze directed anywhere but towards the viewer’s own.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 6 years ago
- License:
- Attribution
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