Kara Walker and the Visual Discourse of the Other in the Contemporary American Arts: Walls, Borders, Transgressions

Abstract

The present paper situates its concerns at the crossroads of cultural studies, gender studies, and visual arts in an effort to illustrate how identity production is achieved at the intersection of difference and sameness, of Self and the Other, as an ongoing negotiation and transgression of borders and boundaries. This study focuses on the work of the contemporary American visual artist Kara Walker in order to offer an illustration of how the exploration of the continuous interplay between difference and sameness generates an artistic act whose originality reaches beyond ideological categories, hierarchies, and dichotomies. Moreover, this paper explores how contemporary art rewrites traditional master narratives such as history or patriarchy relying on the reinterpretation of their clichés and stereotypes.