Sikkema Jenkins gallery is modestly presenting An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters, new prints from Kara Walker in the West Gallery. 

As we enter the West Gallery we see a suite of six etchings in different sizes done in typical Kara Walker style.  The compositions are stark, printed in black ink of white paper.  The figures are sinuous ready to shift shape.  The theme is typically racially driven and rich in that it defies a simple reading.  But there is something different here.  Kara Walker is breaking out of the flat silhouette and playing with depth.  We see sketchy line drawings interacting with flat black silhouettes.  The silhouettes themselves now have eyes, noses and lips.  The first print, no world, reads like a children’s book illustration.  This is a multilayered ocean scene.  In the center a wooden ship is lifted from the ocean by large black hands – hands the size of the ship itself.  Underwater, a large black woman swims away, her head and feet span the length of the scene.  And to the left on a small island, a man in a top hat approachs a curvy black figure who has raised a reed in self-defense.  This story is rich in that it can be read in many ways.  The large black figures might be mythical sea people protecting an island from colonization.  Or this might be a historical account of an island people’s escape from slavery.  Walker’s narratives are charged and keep the viewer guessing about the particulars of the story?  But this guessing is not open.  Walker gives us the setting and sometimes the reference in time but she is very precise in keeping us focused on the unsettling history of colonization.

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