As a child, I was subjected to a lot of spaghetti Westerns and hated them. I wanted the Indians to win – or just not be so sad! Kara Walker Read Quote
I don’t know how much I believe in redemptive stories, even though people want them and strive for them. Kara Walker Read Quote
Sugar crystallizes something in our American soul. It is emblematic of all industrial processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White being equated with pure and ‘true’: it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure. Kara Walker Read Quote
I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all. Kara Walker Read Quote
There was a manifesto in the late ’60s/early ’70s, and it basically laid out what ‘black art’ was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules – I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists. Kara Walker Read Quote
I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the ‘negress’ coming into a white-box institution. It’s kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress. Kara Walker Read Quote
My work is really abject and self-effacing sometimes. I mean, it’s big and overwrought, but it’s just paper dolls, and it’s kind of silly. Kara Walker Read Quote
I grew up partially around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and in that part of the country, there was always this aura of mythology and palpable sense of otherness about being a Southerner. Kara Walker Read Quote
I don’t think that my work is very moralistic – at least, I try to avoid that. I grew up with that sermonising tendency, and I don’t think visual work operates like that. Kara Walker Read Quote
It feels like a game, this work I do. It is totally heartfelt, and I love the sticky terrain, the straight-up cartoons, how the irrepressible and icky rise to the surface. But I am not just trying to call forth bugaboos and demons for the sake of it, for fun. Kara Walker Read Quote
