Kara Walker @ Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (Samo© song and dance)

(image: Bill Traylor)  

"Don't start me that talking
I'll tell everything I know
I'm gonna break up this signified
Cause somebody's got to go"
 -Sonny Boy Williamson

Kara Walker is given the stage on two fronts at Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. First at Lehmann Maupin Gallery Fall Frum Grace (note: the misspelling), Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale, an exhibition of “new” works. Here Walker presents three new videos which draw on, guess what? You got it, her recent experience in the Mississippi Delta. It is worth noting that Walker was born in Stockton California and lives in New York City, and no, not Harlem proper. Her demographic of choice is to nestle right near the comforts of Columbia University.

Speaking of demographics Walker proclaims, “I drove down to the Delta thinking about the terrors of Jim Crow and slavery, yet the silent indifference of the landscape and the economic stasis, lack of mobility, and the persistence of a racist memory in the area was what stuck.” Go figure. Anyways, this shadow puppet narrative, which follows the travails of the heroine, Miss Pipi, revolves around “the mythology surrounding white Southern womanhood, historically cited time and time again as an entity to be protected from sexuality, in particular from the presumed hyper-sexuality of black men.”

Here are some tidbits of info fo ya’ll - Missus Walker was born into a well to do family with a father who happened to be a professor and a mother who worked as an administrative assistant. On top of that she was married for a number of years to a man a white as the driven snow. This in itself is no big deal but it does make one think that the only thing presumed is Walker's understanding of the black experience she stereotypes, not to mention her supposed expertise on white Southern womanhood.

I’m going to tap the didactic vein that Dr. Walker has been stabbing for years with this:

New York Times May, 11 2011, AFRICA. A new study in The American Journal of Public Health, expected to be published Thursday online, estimates that nearly two million women have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with women victimized at a rate of nearly one every minute.

The study sites that the prevalence of rape committed presumably by hyper-sexual or should we say hyper violent black men is on a wider scale and far more pervasive than originally estimated. “Not only is sexual violence more generalized,” the study said, but the findings suggest that the problem extends beyond the nation’s primary conflict zone and future policies and programs should focus on abuse within families.

In short, my knee jerk thought is to hell with the threadbare antebellum South obsession. Why not throw down your ribbons and bows girl and tackle some current issues deep in the belly of the beast...the Congo. I extend this question to the second exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins as well in which the artist is searching for understanding of the way that * “power asserts itself in interpersonal and geopolitical spheres.”

In regards to the actual artworks in the show, Walker is content with settling into a well worn groove with the exception of a loose riffing on a VALIE EXPORT/Marina Abramovic piece via a pant less, guitar picking video. Walker is a draftsman plain and simple but it is worth noting that her imagery is more akin to a Goya/Crumb style than they are to say Bill Traylor…and that speaks volumes.

Read this article: newyorktimes/congo

*Note: In fact, it would appear that the only ethnic group who ever made a concerted effort to suppress Walker was a coalition of  African American artists back In 1997. This was by way of  an organized museum boycott of her art led by artists Beyte Saar and Howardena Pindell just to name a few.