Of course Kara Walker is tired. For two decades, Walker has been creating art that screams. Art that screams at the predominantly white art world, art that screams at the liberals that consider themselves woke and beyond race and art that screams at America, challenging it to confront its ugly and distorted history. Of course Walker is tired, she has been screaming for 20 years and no one is listening because nothing has changed.

Photo: Flickr/Hrag Vartanian

In the artist statement for her newest show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. she says the following: “I know what you all expect from me and I have complied up to a point. But frankly, I am tired.” She goes on to mention the growing racial tensions of America fueled by “random groups of white (male) supremacist goons who flaunt a kind of patched together notion of race purity with flags and torches and impressive displays of perpetrator-as-victim sociopathy” (Walker, 2017), and how her very existence as a “(proudly) raced and (urgently) gendered person” (Walker, 2017) is under threat. Read the entire statement here.

Photo: Lori L. Stalteri/Flickr

We get it. I get it. Walker has been working in a predominately (an understatement) white industry, that caters to a predominately white audience. She is tired of being their poster child for black art. I get it. I've started my career as an artist, attending a predominately (again, an understatement) white MFA program, and I am already tired. Coupled with the intense political atmosphere, I find myself unable and unwilling to make art for that community; it’s emotionally exhausting and I do not want to be "their black." The art I make deals with the rawness, vulnerability and pain that comes from being black in America. I do not want to share that or explain it to a white audience. I suspect that this is exactly what Walker has been doing for the past 20 years and she’s exhausted; she is emotionally spent.

To Walker, I say: come home Kara and rest awhile.

GMP

Writing since October 2017 · 1 story contributed