Walker, Kara
1969-present · Contribution: 1994-present
Contemporary art using room-size black cut-paper silhouette tableaux, drawing, painting, projection, sculpture, and film to interrogate race, gender, sexuality, and violence in the narratives of the antebellum South

Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
Rose to prominence in 1994 with the silhouette mural 'Gone'; a MacArthur Fellow (1997) at 28 and among the most acclaimed Black American artists working today. Her 2014 installation 'A Subtlety' (the Domino Sugar 'Marvelous Sugar Baby') drew enormous public audiences.
Life & background
African-American artist born Nov 26, 1969 in Stockton, CA; raised in Atlanta. MFA, Rhode Island School of Design (1994). Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Sources
- Tate; Whitney Museum of American Art
More in Visual Arts
Alston, Charles Henry
1907-1977
First African American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project; created the first image of an African American displayed at the White House
Basquiat, Jean-Michel
1960-1988
Neo-expressionist painting and drawing; raw, gestural works mixing graffiti-style imagery, scrawled text, and symbols, referencing African American historical figures, anatomy, jazz, and street culture
Bearden, Romare Howard
1911-1988
Pioneering collage artist whose layered, photomontage-based works became some of the most acclaimed depictions of African American life in 20th-century American art
Catlett, Elizabeth
1915-2012
Sculpture and printmaking (linocuts, lithographs, woodcuts) centered on the Black-American and Mexican working-class experience, especially the strength of Black women; works include 'Sharecropper,' the 'Negro Woman' series, and 'Homage to My Young Black Sisters'