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art and feminism in the united states

From Commissions section In 2019, Walker created "Fons Americanus," the fifth annual Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern 's Turbine Hall. The fountain, measuring up to 13 feet (4.0 m), contains allegorical motifs referencing the histories of Africa, America, and Europe, particularly pertaining to the Atlantic slave trade. In her review of Walker's "Fons Americanus" for Artnet News, Naomi Rea noted that "the piece is so loaded with art-historical and cultural references that you could teach an entire college history course without leaving Turbine Hall." For example, Walker quotes specific artworks including The Slave Ship from 1840 by the British painter J.M.W. Turner and The Gulf Stream from 1899 by the American painter Winslow Homer. Rea also observed that – owing to the fountain's running water – the great work of art could be both seen and heard in the Turbine Hall. The artwork is, at the same time, a sort of public monument inspired in part by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. In 2019, acclaimed writer Zadie Smith observed something about public monuments that Walker interrogates in "Fons Americanus": "Monuments are complacent; they put a seal upon the past, they release us from dread. For Walker, dread is an engine: it prompts us to remember and rightly fear the ruins we shouldn't want to return to and don't wish to re-create—if we're wise."

From Work & Career section

She first came to the art world's attention in 1994 with her mural "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart." This cut-paper silhouette mural, presenting an Antebellum south filled with sex and slavery, was an instant hit. The artwork's title references the popular novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, and the individual figures in the tableau index the fairy-tale universe of Walt Disney in the 1930s.[insert citation - essay by Yasmil Raymond]. At the age of 28, she became the second youngest recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant, second only to renowned Mayanist David Stuart. In 2007, the Walker Art Center exhibition "Kara Walker: My Complement, My Oppressor, My Enemy, My Love" was the artist's first full-scale US museum survey.