I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle

Kara Walker's work draws from the legacy of slavery in America and the racial stereotypes in the antebellum South. Her hand-cut silhouettes are inspired by the traditional Victorian medium of the eighteenth-century, in which she recognizes "this very physical displacement (of African Americans): the paradox of removing a form from a blank surface that in turn creates a black hole. I was struck by the irony of so many of my concerns being addressed: blank/black, hole/whole, shadow/substance." This print, depicting a caricatured black child with a dressed monkey alludes to a long history of horrific stereotypes in popular literature and visual culture. It is also rife with sexual allusions, heightening its disturbing effect.