The Emancipation Approximation

The racist and sexist prejudices of the American people are a recurrent theme in the work of the Afro-American artist Kara Walker. Having grown up in the southern United States, her work tends to focus on the policy of racial segregation of blacks once rigorously applied. The title of the work is an ironic citation of the Emancipation Proclamation, the document with which the American president Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1863. Large white, black and grey silhouettes are arranged along the wall to create a living and open narrative, animating scenes with violent and macabre contents inspired by the horrors of slavery, alternating with mythological episodes such as Leda and the Swan. There are scenes of plantation life in which the protagonists embody stereotypes such as Uncle Tom (the obsequious black man), the mammy (the African domestic servant) and the family of white masters.