Kara E. Walker

Best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of American racial and gender tensions. Her work often addresses such highly charged themes as power, repression, history, race, and sexuality. Two recent solo museum shows were widely acclaimed. Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, opened at the Walker Art Center in 2007 and traveled to ARC/Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006. Her work has been exhibited at museums worldwide, including a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Work is included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Gallery in London, and Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Was the American representative to the São Paulo Biennial in 2002 and participated in the 52nd and 56th Venice Biennales. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 1997, at 27, then the youngest person so honored.