Best known for her large-scale cut-paper silhouettes that cover entire rooms, the American artist Kara Walker offers a more intimate insight into her work in this display at the Kunstmuseum Basel (5 June–26 September). On view here are some 600 works on paper from her personal archive, presented to the public for the first time; together they show how important drawing – and the influence of masters in the medium such as Goya and Hogarth – has been in Walker’s construction of her expansive tableaux, which typically take on the history of slavery and racism in the US. Find out more from the Kunstmuseum Basel’s website.
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Untitled, from a 24-part series (2002–04), Kara Walker. Archive of the artist; © Kara Walker
The Right Side (2018), Kara Walker. Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett; © Kara Walker
A Shocking Declaration of Independence (2018), Kara Walker. Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett; © Kara Walker
Barack Obama as Othello ‘The Moor’ With the Severed Head of Iago in a New and Revised Ending by Kara E. Walker (2019), Kara Walker. Joyner/Guiffrida Collection, San Francisco. Photo: Jason Wyche; © Kara Walker
Kara Walker photographed in her studio in 2019. Photo: Ari Marcopoulos