Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, printmaker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work.

Born in 1969, she grew up in an integrated California suburb, part of a generation for whom the uplift and fervor of the civil rights movement and the want-it-now anger of Black Power were yesterday's news.

In sharp contrast with the multi-cultural environment of coastal California, Stone Mountain still held Ku Klux Klan rallies.

Walker recalls reflecting on her father's influence: "One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad's lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw.

"[17] Walker is best known for her panoramic friezes of cut-paper silhouettes, usually black figures against a white wall, which address the history of American slavery and racism through violent and unsettling imagery.

[18] She has also produced works in gouache, watercolor, video animation, shadow puppets, magic lantern projections, as well as large-scale sculptural installations like her ambitious public exhibition with Creative Time called "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant" (2014).

She first came to the art world's attention in 1994 with her mural "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart."

[21] The artwork's title references the popular novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, and the individual figures in the tableau index the fairy-tale universe of Walt Disney in the 1930s.

[22] At the age of 28, she became the second youngest recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant,[23] second only to renowned Mayanist David Stuart.

[21] Walker's silhouette images work to bridge unfinished folklore in the Antebellum South, raising identity and gender issues for African-American women in particular.

Walker incorporates ominous, sharp fragments of the South's landscape, such as Spanish moss trees and a giant moon obscured by dramatic clouds.

Thelma Golden, the museum's chief curator, said that "throughout her career, Walker has challenged and changed the way we look at and understand American history.

Also, the light projectors were set up so that the shadows of the viewers were cast on the wall, making them characters and encouraging them to assess the work's tough themes.

Additionally, she uses the voice of herself and her daughter to suggest how the heritage of early American slavery has affected her image as an artist and woman of color.

"[32] Recent works by Kara Walker include Frum Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale (April–June 2011) at Lehmann Maupin, in collaboration with Sikkema Jenkins & Co. A concurrent exhibition, "Dust Jackets for the Niggerati- and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings submitted ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker," opened at Sikkema Jenkins on the same day.

This sculpture was an old-timey wagon, with Walker's signature silhouettes portraying slaveholders and enslaved people making up the sides and a custom-built steam-powered calliope playing songs off "black protest and celebration.

The sphinx, which bore the head and features of the Mammy archetype, was made by covering a core of machine-cut blocks of polystyrene with 80 tons of white sugar donated by Domino Foods.

Remarking on the overwhelmingly white audience at the exhibition in tandem with the political and historical content of the installation, art critic Jamilah King argued that "the exhibit itself is a striking and incredibly well-executed commentary on the historical relationship between race and capital, namely the money made off the backs of black slaves on sugar plantations throughout the Western Hemisphere.

[46] The fountain, measuring up to 13 feet (4.0 m), contains allegorical motifs referencing the histories of Africa, America, and Europe, particularly pertaining to the Atlantic slave trade.

In her review of Walker's "Fons Americanus" for Artnet News, Naomi Rea noted that "the piece is so loaded with art-historical and cultural references that you could teach an entire college history course without leaving Turbine Hall.

"[48] In 2023, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) commissioned Walker to create the first site-specific installation for its Roberts Family Gallery.

[49] For the season 1998/1999 in the Vienna State Opera, Walker designed a large-scale picture (176 m2) as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain," conceived by museum in progress.

[52] In 2013, Walker produced 16 lithographs for a limited edition, fine art printing of the libretto Porgy & Bess, by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, published by the Arion Press.

The Detroit Institute of Art removed her "The Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts" (1995) from a 1999 exhibition "Where the Girls Are: Prints by Women from the DIA's Collection" when African-American artists and collectors protested its presence.

[53] A Walker piece entitled "The moral arc of history ideally bends towards justice but just as soon as not curves back around toward barbarism, sadism, and unrestrained chaos" caused controversy among employees at Newark Public Library who questioned its appropriateness for the reading room where it was hung.

The artwork included depictions of the Ku Klux Klan accompanied by a burning cross, a naked black woman fellating a white man, and Barack Obama.

[54] In the 1999 PBS documentary "I'll Make Me a World," African-American artist Betye Saar criticized Walker's work for its "revolting and negative" depiction of black stereotypes and enslaved people.

In 1997 Saar emailed 200 fellow artists and politicians to voice her concerns about Walker's use of racist and sexist imagery and its positive reception in the art world.

"[91] In 2017, a large scale mural portrait of Kara Walker done by artist Chuck Close was installed in a New York City subway station (Q line, 86th Street), part of a MTA public arts program.

[94] Early in her career, Walker lived in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, German-born jewelry professor Klaus Bürgel,[95][96] whom she married in 1996.