"The romance of it, the storytelling, it was so rich
and epic and that was what I hadn't expected. I hadn't expected
to be titillated in the way that stories like that are meant
to titillate."
"The silhouette lends itself to avoidance of the subject.
Of not being able to look at it directly, yet there it is,
all the time, staring you in the face."
"Melodrama includes a kind of soft focus view of racism
and laws that are passed and were passed, and continue to
be shifted to affect some kind of change..."
"The Negress, as a term that I apply to myself, is
a real and artificial construct. Everything I'm doing is
trying to skirt the line between fiction and reality."
"It's about how do you make representations of your
world, given what you've been given?"
Your very first silhouette
work "Gone, An Historical Romance of Civil War As it
Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of Young Negress and Her
Heart" makes reference to Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone
with the Wind." What influence did this novel play in
the development of your work?
WALKER:
"Gone with the Wind"
was one of those books that I already had preconceived ideas
about. I already knew that I wasn't going to like it. [LAUGHS]
And some of my experiences in Atlanta with the mythology
of "Gone with the Wind" included things like the
sequel to it that came out around the time I was working in
a large bookstore. And some of the more personal and private
events that happened in and around places like the Cyclorama,
which is not too far away from where they filmed parts of
"Gone with the Wind," and where the fake Tara was.
I had built up prejudices against "Gone with the Wind."
The first time I thought I would work with it, I was in graduate
school and I was making a collage
on top of the book "Gone with the Wind," but really,
without having read it. I decided that wasn't going to work
about halfway through and so I plopped down, started to read
the book, and was thrilled with how engrossing that story
was and how grotesque it was at the same time.
My interests were already running along the lines of other
versions of the historical romance—the permutations of "Gone
with Wind"—to some extent. It was the most fitting
choice of text to work with. But, the romance of it, the storytelling,
it was so rich and epic and that was what I hadn't expected.
I hadn't expected to be titillated in the way that stories
like that are meant to titillate. And at the same time it
was so much fodder for the work that I wanted to do.
ART:21:
In some ways that kind of storytelling
is like the silhouette itself: evasive, yet confrontational.
WALKER:
The silhouette
lends itself to avoidance of the subject. Of not being able
to look at it directly, yet there it is, all the time, staring
you in the face. There it is, the whole world of "Gone
with the Wind" and its legacy and the way that affects
people's everyday encounters. I went through my young adult
life in Atlanta half-blind, let's say, ignorant to some extent,
because there it was. I was actually blinded by this melodrama.
And the melodrama includes a kind of soft focus view of racism
and laws that are passed and were passed, and continue to
be shifted to affect some kind of change, or to affect some
kind of, oh, I don't know how to describe it exactly... You
know, it's designed to avoid the confluence of disgust and
desire and voluptuousness that are all wrapped up in this
bizarre construct of racism. You know, what black stands for
in white America and what white stands for in white America
are all loaded with our deepest psychological perversions
and fears and longings. And, it's a dangerous way of doing
things but it's just human, weirdly human.
ART:21:
Can you talk more about the fodder
of "Gone with the Wind"? You described the storytelling
as soft porn and other stuff that was very offensive.
WALKER:
What can I say? Within the story
of "Gone with the Wind"—the actual novel and
then the permutations of it in film and in life—my expectation,
as I said, was to go in and be sort of horrified and disgusted
with representations
of happy slaves or ignorant slaves. The mammy figure is both
soothsayer and does everything to please her white folks.
And I went into my reading of the book with a clear eye towards
inserting myself in the text somehow. And the distressing
part was always being caught up in the voice of the heroine,
Scarlet O'Hara.
Now, I guess a lot of what I was wanting to do in my work,
and what I have been doing, has been about the unexpected.
You know, that unexpected situation of kind of wanting to
be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the
same time. And, that kind of dilemma, that push and pull,
is sort of the basis, the underlying turbulence that I bring
to each of the pieces that I make, including the specifics:
the mammy characters and the pickaninnies and the weird sorts
of descriptions. At one point Scarlet in her desperation is
digging up dried up roots and tubers down by the slaves quarters
and she's overcome by a "niggery" scent, and vomits.
[LAUGHS] And it's scenes like that that might go washed over
by the sort of vast, epic structure of the story, but that
is an epic moment for me. What does that mean? And why is
there an assumption that I should know what that means? And
where does this idea come from, you know, why is this smell
so overpowering?
ART:21:
So the task is to question the
underlying structure of racist thinking in an epic as quintessential
as "Gone with the Wind"?
WALKER:
Well, people will try and question
it. Let's say. It gets questioned.... But more poetic gestures
happen in the real world, like the Margaret Mitchell house
burning to the ground. [LAUGHS] By no fault of its own, I'm
sure. I want to bring this conversation into the now with,
you know, Trent Lott, or whomever, or just the idea that somebody
like Strom Thurman can be in office for an eternity and bring
views from another era into the 21st century. But it gets
ploughed under and ploughed under to such a degree that we
assume, or the public assumes, that it's not so important.
ART:21:
What's not so important?
WALKER:
It, the it. The niggery scent.
The gross, brutal manhandling of one group of people, dominant
with one kind of skin color and one kind of perception of
themselves, versus another group of people with a different
kind of skin color and a different social standing. And, the
assumption would be that, well, times changed and we've moved
on. But this is the underlying mythology,
I think, of the American project. The history of America is
built on this inequality, this foundation of a racial inequality
and a social inequality. And we buy into it. I mean, whiteness
is just as artificial a construct as blackness is.
ART:21:
Who is the Negress in the title
of "Gone, An Historical Romance..." Is she your
invention?
WALKER:
Well, the Negress, as a term
that I apply to myself, is a real and artificial construct.
Everything I'm doing is trying to skirt the line between fiction
and reality. And for the most part I've titled exhibitions
and a book or two as though they were the creations of a "Negress
of Noteworthy Talent," or a "Negress of Some Notoriety."
I guess it comes from a feeling of being a black woman, an
African American artist—that in itself is a title with
a certain set of expectations that come with it from living
in a culture
that's maybe not accustomed to a great majority of African
American women artists. It's like a thing in itself. And it's
a construct that is not any different to me than the Negress.
The Negress that I initially was referring to was out of Thomas
Dixon Jr's "The Clansmen." This is the great racist
epic of the late nineteenth century that "Birth of a
Nation" was based on. And there's a figure in there who's
described as a tawny negress who is part secretary, part lover.
This nefarious, dark vixen. She's manipulating this misguided
white statesman who wants to put blacks in higher offices
and change the culture, and with this tawny negress, with
this vixen, be the arbiter of our social norms. Could this
icon of all that is wrong and sexual and vulgar be uplifted
to the highest? My answer being yes—she would, she will.
ART:21:
So there's a melodramatic aspect
not only to the form that the work takes, but also to life
as it's lived now?
WALKER:
Melodrama... I've always been
interested in the melodramatic, in outrageous gestures. One
thing that got me interested in working this way, with the
silhouettes,
but then working on a large scale,
had to do with two longings. One was to make a history
painting in the grand tradition. I love history paintings.
I didn't realize I loved them for a long time. I thought that
they were ridiculous in their pompous gesture. But the more
I started to examine my own relationship with history, my
own attempts to position myself in my historical moment, the
more love I had for this artistic, painterly conceit: which
is to make a painting a stage and to think of your characters,
your portraits or whomever, as characters on that stage. And
to give them this moment. To freeze-frame a moment that is
full of pain and blood and guts and drama and glory. It just
became all the more relevant to my project.
And my project, it's been about many things, but I think,
and I sometimes forget to mention this, but the second longing
is about trying to examine what it is to be an African American
woman artist, so it's not just an examination of race relations
in America today. I mean, that's a part of it. It's a part
of being an African American woman artist. It's about how
do you make representations of your world, given what you've
been given?
ART:21:
Can you talk about the humor
in your work? Is it a tragic humor?
WALKER:
Giddy humor. Giddy. I think
I described this kind of turbulence that drives most of the
work, and it's a turbulence that's not unlike melodrama, or
the kind of dredging up of every feeling one could possibly
have about a situation which is all about feeling. And it's
difficult not to laugh off that behavior, that sense of being
overloaded, out of control, unable to contain even the horror
of being able to think about something that you know you shouldn't
be thinking about, or that you know isn't going to resolve
itself just by thinking about it. It might not resolve itself
by talking about it. It might not resolve itself by enacting
laws about it. Or writing about it. And it's that feeling
of needing to make this offering as a form of truth-telling,
no matter how awful it is and then, uhg, you know, being flabbergasted
at even having to do that! Why should that even have to be
done? And then sometimes the work is just ridiculous and silly
and weird.
ART:21:
That's sort of truth-telling
must be exhausting! Do you ever question yourself: "Why
me?"
WALKER:
I never say, why me? I gave myself
this job. [LAUGHS]
