aAfrican/American
Ms. Walker earned a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Her work has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions. In 1997, she became the youngest recipient ever of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant.
Walker came on the contemporary art scene in the 1990’s when she revived the art of cut-paper silhouette, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries as a women’s art, and began using it as a means to explore the history of race relations in the United States. She has earned critical acclaim for her large, room-sized installations that depict fictional narratives drawn from the antebellum South. Her images often feature racially stereotyped characters engaging in taboo acts of sex, violence, and degradation, and can be provocative, unsettling, and difficult to view.