A Black Hole Is Everything a Star Longs to Be - Insights into Kara Walker's relentlessly themed universe

The U.S. contemporary artist Kara Walker (*1969) stirred the art world primarily with her oversized silhouettes and her expansive sculptures, which she deliberately charged in a provocative and perceptive manner with social problems on topics such as racism, sexuality, oppression, and violence.

With the solo show A Black Hole Is Everything a Star Longs to Be, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main takes a deep look into Kara Walker's archive of drawings. Starting on October 15 2021, more than 650 works on paper and a selection of films will be on view. Walker impresses with her virtuously realized wealth of styles and techniques. At the same time, visitors can follow Walker's graphic thought processes with the help of the sketches and notes presented and thus immerse themselves in her world of satire and caricature as well as imagination and subversion. Her references, meanwhile, consist of both historical and contemporary events. Beginning with slavery and ending with the Obama presidency, she repeatedly brings issues such as racism and sexual violence into the viewer's gaze with unsparing candor, with the help of her drastic visual language. Until January 16, 2022, interested visitors can view the exhibition from the perspective of the emergence of collective and subjective identity.