Kara Walker continues her ascent in the art world

Arts and Culture

Kara Walker continues her ascent in the art world

The 37-year-old Kara Walker is not just a star. In today's art world, she is a supernova. And this is the former Atlantan's moment:

Kara Walker, who moved to Atlanta from California at age 13, as a student at Redan High School.

Kara Walker at graduation day for Atlanta College of Art 1991 with former president Ofelia Garcia.

Details from 'Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart.' Walker startled and intrigued the art world with this 50-foot-long mural at the Drawing Center in New York in 1994.

More of 'Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart.'

At the tender age of 27, Walker, shown here in her art studio in Providence, R.I., won a ⿿genius⿝ grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Now, 38, Walker is an art star, with a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

A new direction: Walker brings in exploded-quilt imagery in this 2007 work.

Each work in this series is inspired by the description of a racial incident recorded in the title: 'Bureau of Refugees: Mulatto hung by a grapevine rear road side between Tuscaloosa & Greensboro.'

A master of irony, Walker conveys the barbarity of racism, exemplified in the lynching depected in this detail of 'Divining Rod,' in the seductively beautiful language of this silhouette.

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Kara Walker, who moved to Atlanta from California at age 13, as a student at Redan High School.

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