Kara Walker- Installation Research Report

                   

The visual tropes of Kara Walker's work - race, sex, the gothic, the grotesque, violence, violation, abjection, obscenity, desire, death, excrement, and slavery - collide and crash violently and constantly with the racial and sexual registers of American history and culture. Her representations of transgression and excess - those visual discursive eruptions that leak from the confines of the image - possess a disturbing and destabilizing power.

Thesis

Pertaining to previous materials reviewed throughout this course, installation art is a powerful form of creative expression by creating ambient and immersive spaces that allow viewers to emotionally and mentally engage with the work. Using to phrase “ambient”, perfectly describes the experience one shall have when looking at such revealing work. Installations allow fluidity of the mind that voyageurs within the space tend to follow suit and start to be engulfed in it. Installations tell a story without words.

My Favorite Pieces

Walker first rose to fame in an exhibition at The Drawing Center in New York of her work Gone: An Historical Romance of Civil War as it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of Young Negress and Her Heart.

In 2019 Walker unveiled Fons Americanus as part of the Hyundai Commission for the Tate Modern in London. The 13 m tall fountain critically responded to the Victoria Memorial fountain in front of Buckingham Palace, connecting the earlier version and the history it represented to Great Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.  

Links to the videos that I used in the presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipd7ZjFcoo8&t=26s 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRkP5rcXtys&t=539s   

Mock-up and Progress Report Presentation

Picture Frame Mock-ups

There will be sticks, flowers, or leaves around the frames that blends in with the nature theme that is surrounding the installation. The images share the various angles the frames will be propped up on. Some of them are from the previous blog post. I want it to sort of look like a sign or a reef. Pretty big that it is noticeable to the viewer when they sit down. 

"In an installation, the space in which the audience stands and walks often has a double function as the space of the work as well as the viewer. In this sense this differs from sculpture and painting, where the space of work- i.e the place from which the artwork "speaks" - is separated from the space of the viewer, i.e the physical epistemological place from which the viewer experiences the artwork." 

(Anne Ring Petersen, Installation Art page 41-45)

Your Project Proposal Blog Post & Presentation

 

                                    Your Project Proposal Blog Post & Presentation

"A window into another world"

I loved the bench ideas the most. I could really use the environment/space surrounding the benches for the installation. Either using the pathway, grassy areas, trees, benches and whatever else. I am not sure if I could be cleared to put my installation in these areas. If it does become an issue, I can move them to the benches closer to campus.

Here are some ideas of the placement of where I would want the frames to be in.

Angle #1

Angle #2

Angle #3

These are just placement ideas of where I would like the frames to possibly be. Again, many ideas with space. On the ground (around the feet where people could look down instead of the surrounding areas). On the side of the bench (off to the side). On the top of the bench where people's backs may lay/press on.

Ideas of Designing the Frames

Words that could be written on the frames (possibly carved out), fill the frames in with various items, and using sculpture to hold the frames up.