Kara Walker

As the elevators opened and I walked out onto the second floor of the Whitney Museum, I was confronted by this humungous black and white mural that featured a number of different images and scenes. The one that is pretty much the most shocking (and that’s saying a lot within this context) is that of a pickaninnied black girl giving head to lil ole Huck Finn. As if someone had just walked by me and snatched my gold chain, I seized up and held my chest. Shook and shaken, I was traumatized. But this is why I came here. This is what I wanted to experience, the kind of horror I needed to bring me back to center. And clearly so did most of NYC. This was last Sunday and it was the final day that Kara Walker's "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love" would be here. I kept running into so many people I knew and recognized from BK and Harlem. The gallery was packed like it was a club opening, not an exhibit closing. Never mind it was Superbowl Sunday and the weather outside was sunny and spring like, everyone was curious, if not anxious to understand how race, racism, slavery and gender bias could work its way into the imagination in such a way to create not only brilliantly beautiful reinterpretations of the worse of our society, but also works that, in their unsettling horror, educated and empowered. Surveying Kara's black and white silhouettes and her letters, notes and sketches especially from "Notes From a Negress," all I could do to keep from crying, to keep from choking the life out of some innocent Caucasoid was shake my head and write in my journal.

Looking at a blog The Whitney created around this exhibit and browsing online and in my inbox, I found a number of interesting quotes about art, agency, resistance and power. Check it:

It's interesting that as soon as you start telling the story of racism, you start reliving the story. You keep creating a monster that swallows you. But as long as there’s a Darfur, as long as there are people saying 'Hey, you don't belong here' to others, it only seems realistic to continue investigating the terrain of racism. --Kara Walker

In Walker's work, slavery is a nightmare from which no American has awakened: bondage, ownership, the selling of bodies for power and cash have made twisted figures of black and whites alike, leaving us al scarred, hateful, hated, and diminished. --Hilton Als

I felt the work of Kara Walker was sort of revolting and negative and a form of betrayal to the slaves, particularly women and children; that it was basically for the amusement and the investment of the white art establishment. --Betye Saar

It is harder to speak truth to power than one might think. I spent the day visiting the show. i thought it was absolutely outrageous. i am trying to collect my thoughts. As somebody who has become an avid follower of the work of Kara Walker, I am amazed that so little has happened in terms of the black response to it. The films were so provocatively elliptical, the amount of material devoted to... Betye Saar's critique of her so disproportionate. I was shocked again and again by the obsessiveness of it and total lack of what I see as an adequate response. --Michele Wallace

As a 26yo African-American man, my personal reaction to Kara Walker's work is one of absolute disgust. I personally believe Kara's work carefully situates itself within the post-Civil Rights backlash against racial equality. It's a trickbag, occasionally adopting the rhetoric of "exposing" stereotypes for the sake of social justice, while at the same time further perverting these stereotypes for the tacit amusement of the predominantly white art establishment. Art can be a form of resistence but Kara's work is anything but. --Christopher

Some find Walker's hypersexual and hyperviolent slavery fantasias offensive because they resurrect and mimic not one but two offensive programs--the aristocratic illusions of insane hillbilly cotton farmers and the coonification samboification pickannyification and thingification of a people whose enslavement rendered the Bill of Rights a scrap of lies from the get-go. Walker's critics sometimes do seem to have forgotten something she apparently hasn't-- that her work can never be more disgusting, awful or cruelly creative than whatever the real thing was. The real problem people have with Walker's work may not be what's in it-- the real problem is that we really don’t want to see a 'behind the music' version of the heroic runaway slave narrative, one complete with all the hidden, historical and hideously un imaginable visuals that duly underscore why the heroic narrative is actually so damn heroic. --Greg Tate

theHotness Top 7 in the '07

Why seven you ask? Well why not? Seven is a wonderful mystical number, at least in my head-- the seven deadly sins, seven days for God to create the world, seven virtues, seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, Yemaya's number and I could go on and on. So in the spirit of all things inspiring, magical, dynamic, creative and unique I've decided to compile a list of grrrl's or things produced by grrrls that reflect and emanate these attributes. Here's my list. Please share with me who made your Top 7 and you will have a chance to win theHotness 7 CD and your list may also appear in an upcoming issue of theHotness ezine:

7. Maya Azucena - for still keeping it real independent and fly with her independently distributed 2007 sophmore release Junkyard Jewel, which was described by Billboard as "soulful and soaring." Not a newcomer to the scene, this Brooklyn native has been featured on BET and last year blew wigs back with her performance on Washington DC's Great Mall at the Save Darfur Rally. She has made a choice to continue her independent ventures even in the face of mainstream popularity and excess, showing her professional hotness all the way!

6. "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse - This CD was a breath of fresh air—exhilarating, cathartic, mesmerizing and beautiful. Amy, on the other hand, not so much. No doubt we had been waiting for a record that spoke about vulnerability, love and hurt with this kind of authenticity and rawness for quite awhile (like Questlove so infamously remarked-- this was the album Lauryn was supposed to make) Hopefully Amy will get it together because it doesn't look like Ms. Hill is coming around anytime soon.

5. The Namesake: Directed by Mira Nair and based on the best selling novel by Jumpha Lahiri, this movie gracefully yet fiercely delved into themes of immigration, family, identity and tradition offering up dilemmas that, in its wake, demanded deep thought and contemplation over simple resolution.

4. Jessica care Moore - For founding Moore Black Press a staunch publishing house for poets that celebrated its 10th year anniversary in 2007. MBP has released a number of top selling, critically acclaimed books by such literary luminaries as Danny Simmons, Asha Bandele and Saul Williams to name a few. Looking ahead, Jessica, who recently welcomed a son to her family, will be adding music to her mix, making her a living, breathing reflection of everything she expressed in her poem "Black Girl Juice" that blew heads back in ’95 and led to her infamous 5-weeks of domination on "It’s Showtime at the Apollo."

3. Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama - For holding it down at home as a mom to her two girls, in the office as Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and on the road as confidante, campaign advisor and supporter to hubby Barack, for being highly educated and civic minded, for being graceful under fire, and humble when she could easily be over the top. For all this and more.

2. Black Rock Grrrls like Santogold, Janelle Monae, MeShell NdegeOcello, & Shingai Shoniwa of The Noisettes for really bringing the noise and taking afropunking to anotha level. The Creator EP, Metropolis Suite 1: The Chase, The World Has Made Me The Man of My Dreams, and What's The Time Mister Wolf respectively and sonically were the bright shining, hardcore heavenly stars of music in 2007.


1. KARA WALKER & her exhibit:
My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love

From whitney.org: "Drawing her inspiration from sources as varied as the antebellum South, testimonial slave narratives, historical novels, and minstrel shows, Walker has invented a repertoire of powerful narratives in which she conflates fact and fiction to uncover the living roots of racial and gender bias. The intricacy of her imagination and her diligent command of art history have caused her silhouettes to cast shadows on conventional thinking about race representation in the context of discrimination, exclusion, sexual desire, and love. 'It's interesting that as soon as you start telling the story of racism, you start reliving the story,' Walker says. "You keep creating a monster that swallows you. But as long as there's a Darfur, as long as there are people saying ‘Hey, you don’t belong here’ to others, it only seems realistic to continue investigating the terrain of racism.”