art:21 with Kara Walker

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.