Kara Walker, Detail of U.S.A. Idioms, 2017, image via sikkema jenkins & co
It feels unusual to feature a current text on Better Read, but then, these are unusual times.
It strikes me that Kara Walker's artist's statement for her current show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. has not been considered in an expanded context. An artist's statement, in a press release, is already fighting with two critical hands behind its back. Yet the press release is actually the artist's title for her show. The impetus for writing any of this is presumably well understood, but here, the specific circumstances of Walker's work, her practice, and the shitshow of a world we're living in right now should, I believe, upend our complacent expectations.
I myself found it too easy to make quick judgments about these texts and their implications when I saw the ad for Walker's show in Artforum, which contained the show's title, which I'd previously ignored, because I'd taken it for a glib press release. I let the order of reception, my own subjectivity, influence my judgment, in ways that I might not have noticed without further, in-depth consideration. And yet Walker had anticipated it all.
Download Better_Read_015_Kara_Walker_20170914.mp3 [6:57, 3.3mb, via greg.org]
Kara Walker exhibition page [sikkemajenkinsco.com]
Sikkema Jenkins' press release with Kara Walker's texts [pdf, sikkemajenkinsco.com]
