Books by Kara Walker
Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine): A Respite for the Weary Time-Traveler. Featuring a Rite of Ancient Intelligence Carried out by the ... of the Human Specious by Kara E-Walker
by Kara Walker
A gorgeously illustrated book documenting acclaimed artist Kara Walker’s major new installation—“a groundbreaking collaboration merging art and technology” (New York Times)
Kara Walker is renowned for her bold examinations of the dynamics of power and the exploitation of race and sexuality through her profound work that has appeared in exhibitions around the world. She has created monumental sculptures, including A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby (2014), for the former Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn, and Fons Americanus (2019) for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. This beautifully designed book documents the creation of Walker’s major new commission, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) (2024), at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The installation features eight Black automatons, including the seven-foot-tall prophetess, Fortuna, who responds to each visitor with a choreographed routine and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth. Situated in fields of obsidian—a volcanic glass with deep spiritual properties—the other robotic dolls, or Gardeners, rise and fall, gesture, turn, and clamor—trapped in a never-ending cycle of ritual and struggle. Evoking wonder, reflection, respite, and hope, the work explores the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society.
This book presents Walker’s working drawings and paintings, photographs of her creative process with collaborators, and detailed images of the final installation. Also included are an illuminating text by Walker, an essay by product designer David A. M. Goldberg, a selection of fashion designer Gary Graham’s notebook pages, an excerpt from Donna Haraway’s influential essay “A Cyborg Manifesto,” experimental short fiction by writer Damani McNeil, and a conversation between Walker and curator Eungie Joo.
Exhibition Schedule
SFMOMA, San Francisco
July 1, 2024–Spring 2026
Published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Princeton University Press
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$29.95
Kara Walker: After the Deluge
by Kara Walker
Since she first came to the attention of the art world nearly ten years ago, Kara Walker has become one of the most important artists of her generation. Championed by the art world for her fearless embrace of challenging subject matter, Walker has created a body of work that looks unflinchingly at racial inequality in the United States. Known for her bold images using the traditional silhouette, Walker upends the genteel, Victorian origins of the medium by graphically portraying scenes from the antebellum South to explore the politics of slavery, race, and gender. Inspired by the tragedy that beset the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, Walker has created a volume exploring the interconnectedness of the subject of the sea, race, and poverty by juxtaposing examples of her work and historical works from the 19th century. This unique and important book capitalizes on Walker’s deftness at graphic and visceral storytelling, affording the reader a deeply intimate experience of the difficult themes the artist explores.
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The Ecstasy of St. Kara: Kara Walker, New Work
by Tracy K. Smith, Kara Walker, Reto Thüring, Beau Rutland, John Lansdowne
Kara Walker’s work astutely examines race, gender, and identity. Walker’s newest series of large-scale drawings stem from her consideration of monuments and notions of permanence and impermanence following her massive public art project, A Subtlety, in Brooklyn. Influenced in part by the artist’s recent residency at the American Academy in Rome, this series of drawings is an extensive examination of how Walker envisions the rise and fall of society. Richly illustrated, this publication includes plates of each , as well as intimate photographs of the artist at work taken by her partner, acclaimed artist and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos. An introduction by Reto Thüring and Beau Rutland contextualizes the importance of this latest evolution within Walker’s oeuvre; John Lansdowne addresses the topic of Christian iconography and its relationship to Walker’s new drawings; and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith contributes a new poem. In addition, a text by Walker considers her work within the recent political climate.
Distributed for the Cleveland Museum of Art
Exhibition Schedule:
Cleveland Museum of Art
(09/10/16–12/31/16)
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Kara Walker - MCMXCIX
by Kara Walker
Kara Walker began this sketchbook in Munich in 1999, when she was 29 years old. Like most sketchbooks it served as a portal between the real world and the realm of her imagination. Although it was never intended to be shared, nevertheless quite a bit of work came out of this particular book, including the installation Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), which is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum. However, that is an exception to the rule. For the most part the pages in this sketchbook reflect uneasy, unrefined, unfinished thoughts and anxieties, written and drawn with no objectives, no ulterior motives, and no filters.
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Kara Walker Book of Hours
by Kara Walker
"Over the course of 202-2021, during the pandemic, Kara Walker has produced series of drawings in the style of a medieval 'Book of Hours'. Enigmatic images appear to traverse a range of time periods, from scenes of biblical and mythological origins, to images of historical violence, to others that suggest more recent political strife. The highly personal nature of these images capture Walker's own response to the intersection of past and present as a way to understand our contemporary political moment."-Provided by publisher.
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