Kara Walker’s New Drawings Insert Former President Barack Obama Into Art-Historical Allegories—See Images Here

In Kara Walker’s new show at Sikkema
Jenkins & Co., there’s a drawing of former President Barack
Obama as Othello, the titular Moorish general of Shakespeare’s
16th-century tragedy, holding the head of his enemy, Iago—who looks
a lot like Donald Trump. 

It’s one of several recent
drawings by the artist depicting Obama in allegorical scenes that
mix a mythological past with the racist reality of the
present.

In Barack Obama as “An African” With a Fat
Pig (2019), he’s shown
as a tribesman through the eyes of a colonialist. In another, he’s
labeled as Saint Anthony—the patron saint of lost things who was
forced to prove the existence of God before heretics—as flying
demons attack his flesh. It’s called Barack Obama Tormented Saint Anthony Putting Up
With the Whole “Birther” Conspiracy (2019).

Finally, a cryptic drawing
titled Allegory of the
Obama Years by Kara E. Walker (2019) shows the former president in the sky,
glowing and Godlike, as dark clouds close in. A figure cries from
below, as if witnessing the disappearance of hope
incarnate.

A 38-drawing installation stands
as the centerpiece of Walker’s show. Titled The Gross Clinician: Pater Gravidam
(2018), the work is based on Thomas
Eakins famous 1875 painting, The Gross Clinic, which depicts a doctor lecturing over a woman
undergoing a public operation. Walker’s version, rendered in
graphite, gouache, and sumi ink, is more dynamic—a collection of
violent, even phantasmagorical scenes that mix symbols of sin, war,
murder, and protest.

See more images from the show
below.

“Kara Walker: Drawings” is
scheduled to be on view through April 4, 2020. As of now, Sikkema
Jenkins & Co. remains open to the public. 

The post Kara Walker’s New Drawings Insert Former President
Barack Obama Into Art-Historical Allegories—See Images Here
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