Kara Walker through December 14, 2024
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. | 530 West 22nd Street
Besides the beauty, invention, satire, history, and art historical references; besides the exposure of—and to—the violence at the core of Western Society; besides the depictions of slave and slave master, and the dynamics between them; besides the gesturing towards a Black feminine futurity, what I appreciate about Kara Walker’s work is the layers. I still look back in awe at the accomplishment of her monumentally-scaled Sphinx A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, 2014, in Brooklyn’s then-closed Domino Sugar Refinery, how the white powder from the sculpture fell to the floor, and how visitors tracked it into the world, creating a new layer of participation and complicity—in the circus-like racial and sexual objectification of the Black figure as well as in the brutal legacy of sugar production. (On plantations in Haiti, slaves had an estimated life expectancy of three to six years harvesting sugarcane.) In the artist’s current show at Sikkema Jenkins, “The High and Soft Laughter of the Nigger Wenches at Night, in the Colorless Light of Day,” the layers of history and image are still present.
The exhibition is expansive, featuring large-scale collaged group scenes that, compositionally and with their palette, recall landscapes. Predominantly Black figures are cut from paper, in Walker’s signature silhouette style, but here—in a departure from past work—the paper has been painted earthy watercolor hues, signifying humanity’s entwinement with nature. The overlapping figures are sometimes headless, limbs are separated and dangling, or they are attached haphazardly, creating unsettling images of war. More intimate watercolors and ink drawings set off the vastness of the framed collages, while bronze busts (related to Walker’s interactive, mechanized installation now on view at SFMOMA) convey a sense of Black dignity, contrasting with the nearby scenes of abjection. Positioned away from the walls, as though in a garden, the sculptures on plinths create a necessary sense of depth in the gallery, which might otherwise be lost with the works on paper behind frames.
