"The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that's also what the stereotype does."
"I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history."
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More quotes by Kara Walker
"There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist."
"Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings."
"If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'"
"I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful"
"A lot of my work has been about the unexpected—that kind of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time. That kind of dilemma—that push and pull—is the underlying turbulence that I bring to each of the pieces that I make."