Exhibitions
MACA explodes with the art of Kara Walker
The artist from the United States creates an essential exhibition based on a critical vision of the historical past.
Kara Walker and her art are the protagonists of the Contemporary Art Museum of Alicante with an exhibition that gives a capital power to the work of the African-American artist. An almost unique opportunity in Spanish territory to contemplate, read and see her creations, after the exhibition held in 2008 at the CAC in Malaga. Therefore, this is the major exhibition of Kara Walker in Spain in recent years, in a broad journey of questions, approaches and an identity of the artist from Stockton, California.
The visitor will enter the exhibition universe with Kara Walker. Burning Village, from the collection of Michael Jenkins and Javier Romero donated to the Alicante museum. An exhibition that shows Kara Walker's chaotic analysis based on issues such as identity, violence, power, desire and also race. The Californian artist, one of the most prominent on the current scene, uses all these elements as a system of oppression and subjugation and does so from elements that characterize her work. Known for her work of paper cutout silhouettes, Walker creates from compositions of great formal beauty, but without forgetting satire and archetypes to reveal contradictions, in addition to creating a subversive look at historical and artistic allusions that influence her work. The multidisciplinarity translates her into creating with drawings, engravings, installations and goes in parallel with an investigation into the narratives and myths of the United States and how they have been explained over the years and centuries.
The Katastwóf Karavan (Maqueta), Kara Walker (2017). MACA
From February 28 to September 7, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (MACA) creates the path of Kara Walker with 44 works that explain her brilliant career. Thirty-one works are donated to the MACA as of 2021 and it all begins with I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle from 1996, a silhouette cut out in black that already recognizes the future work of Kara Walker. Myth and martyrdom intersect with Resurrection Story without Patrons from 2017, created in Rome at an important moment for the artist where she links this Christian iconography with the legacy of slavery in America and a movement that was growing like Black Lives Matter. Along with this series of works, the Alicante exhibition is complemented by three artist books and a series of steel sculptures such as The Bush, Skinny, De-Boning from 2002, as well as an animated film entitled Prince McVeigh and the Turner Blasphemies from 2021.
Freedom, A Fable, Kara Walker (1997). MACA
Four decades of work where Kara Walker's art opens the door to the world of art for many artists of racial, gender or identity minorities, explained Javier Romero. For all these identities and personal stamp, they make the North American a fundamental reference of the current panorama with her critical vision of the historical past. With this journey through the world of Kara Walker (the donation was important a few years ago), she positions the city of Alicante and the MACA as an artistic epicenter with a set that will have multiple readings and nuances in a discourse that will not leave the viewer indifferent.
“Heroes are not completely pure and villains are not purely evil. I am interested in the continuity of conflict, the creation of racist or nationalist narratives, or any narrative that people use to construct a group identity and hold themselves together.” Kara Walker
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