Speaker 1 (00:00): Art Palace is sponsored by P N C Bank coming up on Art Palace. Speaker 2 (00:07): Yeah, it's a mythology that was created centuries ago, centuries ago, and yet we're still all ass snared and trapped in it. Speaker 1 (00:28): Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell eig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool people are Ciana Rouse and Trudy gaba, co-curators for the special exhibition. Kara Walker. Cut to the quick. Speaker 3 (00:53): My name is Trudy gaba. I am the site curator here in Cincinnati for the Carol Walker. Cut to the Quick Exhibition. And I also work full-time at the museum as the curatorial assistant for South Asian Art Islamic Art and Antiquities. Speaker 2 (01:07): Hello, I'm Cianna Rouse, and I am a poet based in Nashville, Tennessee, and guest curator for Carol Walker. Cut to the quick, Speaker 1 (01:18): I'm just kind of curious. I'll start with you, Trudy. How did you get involved with this exhibition? Speaker 3 (01:22): So I remember in various curatorial meetings early on in the year, we heard rumblings of the Carol Walker exhibition and seeing if it could align with our exhibition calendar and take it on. And then, or we finally realized it was possible and it was happening and we had dates and Ciana was on board. I wanted to have some involvement and its reception here in Cincinnati. And I went to our department head as well as Cameron Kitchen, the director, and asked if this was a project where I could lead. Speaker 1 (02:05): And how about you? How did you get involved in this exhibition? Speaker 2 (02:10): As I was saying, I'm a poet and I'm based in Nashville, Tennessee. And so the Frisk Art Museum in Nashville organized this exhibition with the Jordan De Schnitzer Foundation. And so Susan Edwards, who's the c e o and Director at the Frisk, was the curator for this exhibition. And in that process, she realized that being a part of Carol Walker's work is to experience poetry, visual poetry and want it to have a poetic voice as a part of curating the exhibition. I had done a lot of events and a lot of work with artists in the past at For Start Museum, but this was my first time being a curator when she asked if I would join her in organizing this exhibition. And so I was co-curator there. And when Cameron Kitchen came and checked out the exhibition in Nashville, we began talking and he invited me to be guest curator here. And it has been so incredible to work with Trudy and her knowledge and experience the exhibition a second time, but in a new city. Speaker 1 (03:18): Tell me more about that poetic connection to the work and how do you think Kara's work is we're first name basis, Kara and I. Perfect. How do you think the work feels poetic to you? Speaker 2 (03:39): So whenever I'm teaching poetry with students, often actually I'm bringing in art because poetry and art are so related to one another, but specifically with walker's work, whenever I am viewing it, I believe that you have to pause, be still with it, see it again, walk away, see it again, walk away, see it again. And when I'm talking to students about reading a poem, it's really the same way that you are more still with it. You go into it, you move out of it, you ask questions of the poem, hopefully the poem is asking questions of you. And that is what Garra Walker's work is doing for everyone. It is asking questions and we ask questions of it. And so really the experience with the poem and the experience with her work are so similar. Speaker 3 (04:32): We've talked a lot about poetry and how it shakes something inside of you that's always been there, but it kind of brings it to consciousness. And that's what Walker's work does. That's how it functions and operates. Speaker 2 (04:47): Once Speaker 3 (04:47): You view it, it takes a hold of you and it doesn't let go. And I think that unrelenting aspect of this exhibition and going through every gallery, you have those moments and it's a constant, constant, not an attack, but you just feel this, grab this tension between all of the feelings that you are experiencing and they're extreme. So I think that interplay and kind of tension between the power and the beauty, the helplessness, the sorrow, the trauma, but the joy and the uplifting aspects and the triumph, that interplay and that tension it creates grabs you with every art. Speaker 1 (05:39): I feel weird talking about poetry anytime because I don't know anything about poetry, so I don't feel like I should probably make grand statements about it. But I think to me, why I think this work has a great connection to poetry is I think both get a lot of their power from ambiguity and not giving you all the answers. Speaker 2 (06:01): Absolutely. Speaker 1 (06:02): And making you make a lot of connections. To me, that's the difference between poetry and prose is there's room for you to get in there and play around. And this work is, I mean, one of the things that makes it so exciting to me is that it's not always clear what is happening, what is being said, how I'm supposed to feel about it. And it definitely asks as many questions to us as we ask to it. And it doesn't give a lot of answers, I feel like either. Speaker 2 (06:40): Right. No, I mean, I think you are ready to talk about poetry in a grand way. Yes. Well, thank you. That is it. That is it. Yeah. And I mean, I think that we talk often about how that may be a place of discomfort for people because we do live in a society that likes to have answers that likes everything to be black and white and not in the gray. What an irony that so much of the work in here is black and white, but it's not Speaker 1 (07:08): Right. Literally black and white, Speaker 3 (07:10): Literally black and Speaker 2 (07:11): White. But again, it's operating in so much gray, and I think it's because of Walker's bravery and also asking herself hard questions and wrestling with hard things. And again, that's what a poet is approaching the page with some bravery and willing to interrogate themselves. Speaker 1 (07:29): Well, yeah, even talking about the black and white and the starkness and the silhouettes that she's sort of so famous for. I mean, part of what they do is, again, they don't give you all the information. The point of them is that you don't have all of the information. And so there's this interesting thing that's happening where they're incredibly precise. On one level, you see all these little details, but then at the same time, there are points where you're like, wait, what am I seeing here? Is this, a lot of times there's overlapping of objects and they become this just one shape, and you're not sure what am I seeing? Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? Because what I'm seeing is kind of disturbing, Speaker 2 (08:12): Right? Speaker 3 (08:12): Yeah. She's definitely drawing on the visitor and the viewer to participate as both an observer, but she also flips it so that with that ambiguity, you are then forced to extend that narrative and fill in the spaces and the gaps and the pauses with your own impressions, your own experiences in how you view and see the lens of this world. Speaker 2 (08:42): And then even hopefully that gets flipped on its head. And if you think about it, she's so often working with stereotypes, and again, we try to make stereotypes very simple and black and white. Oh, I see you and that's who you are. And I can put you in a box. But one of the things that I love is we were looking at, I'll be a monkey's uncle that piece the other day, and I thought, doesn't he look like he's afraid? And then I looked at it again, oh, maybe he's happy. You don't know, because you don't get the expressions that you would in a figure. And so you're having to keep trying to figure out who that person is and look closer instead of, or in this case it was a monkey person, but you're looking closer and asking more questions. Or sometimes a figure might look like it's running in one direction, but then if you look at the feet, they're turned in the opposite direction, or they're falling one way and you think you're looking at the front of their bodies, but then all of a sudden you can look at the knees think, oh, maybe I'm looking at the back of their body. Speaker 2 (09:52): And what if we did that with each other instead of just putting each other in boxes, but said, oh, let you be more nuanced. Let me look at ways that you're moving and being in the world as opposed to just looking at your silhouette. Speaker 1 (10:06): There's a great quote that it's painted on the wall here where she says she's not a historian, but an unreliable narrator. And I wondered, you thought what that means as an artist to be an unreliable narrator? Speaker 3 (10:21): I mean, I mean, in the way we tell our own histories, it's from our perspective. So it's true to us, Speaker 2 (10:31): But Speaker 3 (10:32): We can be in the same room experiencing the exact same scenario, but your reading of it is going to be completely different from my reading of it. So when I feel like engage in the storytelling, I might not agree with how you are seeing things, your perspective, even though we're in this moment together. And I think that says a lot about history as well. That's from someone's unique perspective. So it is a shade of gray. So where do you find that truth when everyone has a different unique lens through how they view and see the world Speaker 2 (11:16): In many ways too. Walker is so narrative in her work, but she's working with fiction even though she's working with history. And so I think that's her way of reminding everyone this happened, but it didn't happen exactly this way necessarily. And just to remember that as you're in this, that she's just like any fiction writer, would you pull on history, you pull on truth, and then you create a story around it. And sometimes that might be a better way to enter into a story instead of just trying to decide that the author of it is telling the truth just exactly the way that it happened. So yeah, I mean, I will make myself the hero of every story if I get a chance to tell it. Right? And even in my poems, I have teachers that constantly pushed me to, again, interrogate myself and not just make myself the hero of my own history. And Walker says that quite a bit, that she's always wrestling with the female figure being the heroine as well as, I mean not, she likes to kill the heroine in it and also recognize that I think she says, this woman can be a queen and a whore, and which one of those is the heroine in that situation? I don't know. Speaker 3 (12:46): And we talked a lot about that when we were looking at fawns Americana and looking at the Venus figure at the top. And I've seen that piece from many angles. And it wasn't until it was physically in the gallery that I noticed that her throat is slashed, but she is in this very graceful pose and there's beauty and she looks sublime and serene. And then when you look closer, you see that would've had water spurring from her neck in the original fountain that Kara created at the Tate Modern. So again, that complex aspect of a protagonist that Speaker 2 (13:34): You Speaker 3 (13:34): Want to be the hero, but she's also a victim. And you see the beauty at the same time as you see something very horrific. I like to call that the Walker paradox. You see beauty and trauma and pain holding the same space at the same time. And I think that's one of the most meaningful connections I've had to this exhibition is that you see the whole range of the human condition on display and sometimes within the same print. Speaker 2 (14:11): And just when you look and see something traumatic, you recognize resilience right out of that. But then just when you see something victorious, you're again reminded of the trauma. Speaker 1 (14:25): Well, I thought we could take some time and maybe just look at a few pieces that you maybe are some of your favorites. And so we're not going to obviously have enough time to go by piece by piece in this exhibition. So many works in it, but I thought we'd just highlight maybe a couple or whatever we have time for. So I don't know who wants to go first. Well, it Speaker 3 (14:48): Happened to be in the physical space of our two favorite pieces, really. So this worked out beautifully. Speaker 2 (14:55): It did. So this one, and it is the one sketch we have in the entire exhibition, and it is of a hanging. There are three bodies that are hanging from a tree. As a writer, I actually often write about trees and especially thinking about the ways that they've had to be executioners against their will, perhaps they didn't ask to do that, but in American history, we people made them be that. And so I'm really drawn into the fact that you're viewing this from the perspective of the tree as opposed to where we usually see those photographs where white people have gathered in glee watching a black body hanging. Instead, we're viewing it from the perspective of the tree. And we're also seeing a young girl reaching for these bodies. And one thing you might think is, oh, should that girl be there in that moment? But really those bodies shouldn't be there in that moment. That's the most shocking and terrible thing. And then to see this girl reaching, there's this grief that you feel there. And it has also placed perhaps the family members, the young black children of these victims right into our frame in a way that you don't see when we're usually seeing photos of lynchings. And I just picture her creating this sketch one day very quickly and having this incredible insight and putting it on the page, and I'm moved by it. Speaker 3 (16:38): And having this drawing drawings are such a personal reflection into the artist process, into their creative process and seeing the sketch, every harsh line, the points where it's really concentrated and defined, and the subtleties of the spaces that are left with this fineness, it's just beautifully done. It's haunting, it's painful. But even her reaching out that long and you're seeing this tender moment, Speaker 1 (17:12): Yeah, she's doing a lot with very little here. There's so few. When you were talking about the perspective of being from the tree, I started looking more to the background at that point and realizing like, oh yeah, she's even kind of giving us just enough of this sort of tree line in the background that makes us feel like we're up higher and looking down and this line that just becomes this wow. And it's just nothing. But it's so elegantly made. I know she's done some other works that do feel like this really expressive mark making, and it's so different than what I think you're used to seeing of her and what maybe she became really famous for, which is there's so no expression in those cutouts in the black and white stuff, and they're so precise. So it's just so interesting to see that she can do this and that this is a part of it, that there's this really expressive confidence. Speaker 3 (18:13): Yeah, there's the energy. Yeah, the Speaker 2 (18:15): Energy is complicating. And in fact, when you were talking about the work tugging, I thought that is exactly my experience of this. Every time it Speaker 3 (18:25): Pulls you, Speaker 2 (18:26): Pulls me closer Speaker 3 (18:27): And looking at it now, I'm like, she looks to be an extension of the tree. You don't really see where the tree ends. And she begins, and even her arm reaching out mirrors, it's in the same Speaker 1 (18:40): Positioning Speaker 3 (18:40): As the branch. She's kind of morphing them into oneness. Speaker 1 (18:47): I mean, the way she draws that body is so good. And just the arm and the face, again, just doing so much with so little, so much, it's so emotional. And there's something almost a Disney kind of quality to the face. And I say that not in a derogatory way, but in a way of being incredibly good at communicating expression, especially in a moment where you don't actually see much of the face at all, Speaker 2 (19:14): Right? You don't see her full face, and yet you feel her sorrow. And even just that hat on her head feels, again, such a tender detail. She is a sweet child in deep desire, deep wanting. Speaker 1 (19:29): You have the line here and the sketchiness of the branches and then turning that crayon or whatever on its side at the very top. And it's a very different type of mark making that's happening up there. But it's just such a nice balance, especially, I like that with this quick launch and then the roughness of all of the mark making that kind of pulls all of the subject matter forward. And we see that quick down there. And the trees as well, or on the road. I'm sorry. Speaker 2 (20:01): Yeah, there's a fury in in how she's put it together. Speaker 1 (20:06): Well, Trudy, what was your favorite piece that you wanted to talk about? Speaker 3 (20:10): So we can move down the gallery and look at snared, which I think is a kind of a wonderful foil or a nice contrast to the drawing as it also depicts a noose, but in a completely different context. Speaker 3 (20:30): So here we see a gentleman with the noose in each of his hands, and he is using all of his strength and might to bring down the tree, this source of his destruction. And I think there's the beauty in that reclamation of his power. And he's no longer going to have the source of his demise be something that has sway over him. So here we see reclamation, we see a figure who graceful in stance. His legs are firmly planted like a tree branch, but he's extending his arms and reaching as well towards the tree. But he no longer is going to be the passive one in this experience. He is actively the protagonist and has control and command of this scene. Speaker 2 (21:36): And yet he's still snared, right? He is still tethered to this noose, but it's around his calf this time. And so that no necks are getting cracked, no body is dying. Even if he somehow lost control in this piece, he still would survive it. And so there's something interesting about the way he still kind of tethered to this terror, and yet there's a triumph to it that you also feel, Speaker 3 (22:13): It almost looks like a web, like a tangled web, doesn't it? Speaker 2 (22:16): And Speaker 3 (22:17): Now that I'm looking at it in this viewing, I'm seeing so many parallels with lines of his arms and the rope and then the ground. So you're seeing these, this kind of stratification of lines that walker seems to be playing with. And even his neck is completely bent at an angle that is parallel with the ground, with his arm, with the tree branch with the rope. Speaker 2 (22:46): And of course, this piece is also one of the few in this particular one that inverts the silhouette. We're used to seeing the silhouette be a black trace. We're used to seeing the silhouette in black, and yet she inverts it into white on a black background. And I like when she does that and plays with that and challenges us with what we're seeing and who we're seeing, even with a white body or a black body, Speaker 1 (23:24): Took me maybe longer than I should have to realize that one of the things she's doing so smartly with those silhouettes is making you realize how many assumptions you make about a person and their identity based on just, again, the information has been removed. So you just have the silhouette. But yet I feel like we are always pretty aware of the race that she's trying to depict at each moment and those sort of stereotypes about why do I see this person as this? I literally can't see their skin color. I literally can't. So the thing that is supposed to be the end all be in this world is like, I can't even see it yet. I'm still sort of aware Speaker 3 (24:10): It's there even without Speaker 3 (24:12): It being so overt. And I think that's another interesting aspect of her silhouette form. And we take so many visual cues from reading someone's face, and we can understand or get an idea of how someone's reacting, feeling and experiencing that particular moment. And even without that ability to see a face, to see an expression of eyebrows lifted, a brow furrowed, you're still able to kind of tune into that sentiment that they're in that moment. Even without those visual cues to guide you, you still have that innate sense of an awareness of what our protagonist is experiencing in that moment. Speaker 2 (24:58): She does talk a lot about when she moved to Atlanta as a girl, that experience where she was forced to have to have her race defined for her by a bunch of the white people. And I think she also talks about the black people in the community there. Everyone decided who she was based on her race, and I think that made such a lasting impression on her. And so she's constantly in all of these stories reminding us of how, regardless of who you are, regardless of what happens, we still end up bringing ourselves, just as you were saying, back to this story around race, that Speaker 3 (25:38): Mythology was created for us. Yeah, it's Speaker 2 (25:40): A mythology that was created centuries ago, centuries ago, and yet we're still all snared and trapped in it. Speaker 3 (25:48): Yeah. We like to have that easy way of making sense of someone to put them into these easy checkable boxes, and you can't do that with her work. There's too much complexity. And we as human beings are too complex to be fit into these tiny little boxes that are supposed to encompass everything we are as a person distilled to our race. Speaker 1 (26:18): I was thinking back to the unreliable narrator quote that we were talking about earlier, and this piece seems like a great connection to that because again, we're looking at this scene that's not exactly like a literal history of anything, but she's such a good artist that she knows how to make a really great image, and she's like, this is intriguing. This is an intriguing image, and this is sort of getting at something. I think she just is aware when an image is sort of resonating and there's a sort of power to it, and she knows, well, the sort of reality of it is irrelevant that we've hit on something powerful. And I think this also goes back to the poetry as well of it. The poetry of the image is working. So to me it's like, there's something so great about this. The pose doesn't actually make sense as far as what if it is an attempt to pull down the tree in that way. It's not at all how a person would stand, but I think she knows. Yeah, but this is a more interesting image. This is a more interesting way of showing that because it's also like you're talking about a sort of triumph. Speaker 1 (27:28): It's a more triumphant pose that you would have than a person truly. Obviously you would face the tree if you were trying to do that. That's the practicality of it. But no, no, no. It's like the reality isn't actually important. It's like this is both kind of triumphant and tragic and it's like all of these things. So I think she's just so good at doing that and at capturing it and not getting bogged down in the literalism of things and knowing that. But this is more interesting Speaker 3 (27:59): And not so much how the literal form, but what that elicits, how that makes you feel of seeing a baby walking into a Hutt that's on fire. You can see that that scene is horrific, but it's also a feeling as well that she's really trying to hook you with. So when we were looking at emancipation approximation and looking at the figure like Brayer Rabbit that appears Speaker 1 (28:28): Throughout Speaker 3 (28:28): The series, and I think a lot of people want to make sense of why this character is there at this particular moment. What literally is a rabbit doing here? And stepping back to think, okay, maybe it's supposed to be representative of something else, a feeling Brayer rabbit is a trickster, so it makes sense in that narration to kind of see this character pop in and out. And so yeah, not always taking things so literally, but giving it that space that it's not always what you're seeing, but maybe the feeling that is emanating from seeing that image doing something that's so depraved. Speaker 1 (29:11): Yeah. Yeah. That's probably one of my least favorite things people do is try to crack the code of art or movies or things like, oh, I don't want to hear your conspiracy theory about breaking this down into this exact one to one. Well, this represents, it's like, yeah, I feel the same way. It's like, well, yeah, but maybe it's just more about the very big feelings that it's giving you and not necessarily a perfect allegory for something else. Speaker 2 (29:47): Right. Speaker 2 (29:48): And again, just to bring in more poetry when I'm teaching, it's all about what you're feeling. And then that's why I say to keep revisiting it because even just right now we're seeing something new and we have looked at this piece. I mean, I've been looking at it for over a year now, and yet we still can see something new or have a different experience and have a different emotion with it. And again, that's what I'm often telling students with the poem, rather than trying to crack the code of the poem, be present to it, be present to how you're feeling that poem in your body in that moment, and then go to it again and see what else it reveals. Should we maybe talk about a sculptural piece or learning village Speaker 3 (30:31): Maybe? Yeah, let's do do that. Speaker 2 (30:32): Yeah, Speaker 3 (30:33): That's a good one. Speaker 2 (30:34): And actually I'm excited to talk about this one. I don't always know how to talk about it. Speaker 1 (30:38): I know. Speaker 2 (30:38): And I think that's okay. It's okay to not entirely know what's going on in a piece of work. Speaker 1 (30:45): Well, I'll just set up, so we've moved over and we're looking at a piece that's called Burning African Village Playset with Big House and Lynching. And yeah, how do we talk about Speaker 3 (31:00): This? What is our entry into this piece? Speaker 1 (31:03): Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Where do you begin? Speaker 2 (31:06): Yeah. Well, I think we could begin with the title and that idea of play set, knowing that that's a thing that was fascinating to her, the way that the stories we learn as children do shape the way we end up viewing the world. And so I do know she was questioning what would it be like for these narratives around race and gender and our American history to literally be something that children play with to creating this place that you could just imagine kids sitting at a table and Barbies, you have almost like Barbie dolls, and yet they're on fire. Speaker 3 (31:48): And when you're viewing it straight on, there's no beginning, middle, and end. You don't know, am I reading it left to right, to left? What exactly is unfolding in this scene? There's a lot of chaos unfolding. And I think when I first saw this piece, yes, I was immediately drawn in to the whimsy of it, of seeing these shapes and having that connection and nostalgia to a past of playing with something similar for childhood sets where you would assemble something with a Barbie and have these characters and dialogue. But when you return to it and then you give it another long glance, you see that even though there's that sense of familiarity, there's also this aversion that's coupled with it. And again, going back to that idea of the Walker Paradox, you have those tensions that are at play here and you can see a figure that does look kind of serene and beautiful, stationed in one positioning. And then when you look to her left and to her, Speaker 2 (33:02): You Speaker 3 (33:02): See a figure running with their hair on fire. So even in this one moment can see beauty sublimity, and you also see pain and destruction and chaos at the same time. Speaker 2 (33:20): So Walker, when she first put this piece together, you can look at pictures of how she put it together and see a story that she was telling, but she does also encourage museums that show it to move it around and put it together as you would like. And even some museums will move it around mid exhibition. Speaker 1 (33:41): Oh, that's so cool. So Speaker 2 (33:42): One time you see it, it might be one way and another time it's another way, which I think is also really great, especially for someone who is so narrative in her work, to really allow you as a viewer to create the narrative. So there isn't one story, and that's probably why it's hard to know where to enter into it, but what would happen if this man whom we were going to assume as a white man with a flag was over here by the village? Speaker 1 (34:14): How Speaker 2 (34:14): Would we see him differently if we were to place him there? What story would we end up telling, which is what kids are doing when they're playing with paper dolls? Or do kids play with paper dolls still? I loved paper dolls when I was a kid. Absolutely. But yeah, when you're playing with Barbies, you're creating your own tails and your own stories own. And so that the movability of this is really interesting as well as disturbing to think of kids playing with some of these images. Speaker 1 (34:44): But it's like then it makes you also go, well, what are the disturbing things that we were taught? What were the sort of disturbing messages in the things we watched and consumed and played Speaker 2 (34:57): With as Speaker 1 (34:57): Kids? It's obviously over the top, but it also makes you think of that. And then another angle too, I was thinking about as we've been looking at it is it makes you also think about the way people's lives are played with as well and how this is a play set to somebody, but the people in it are on fire. In some cases. There's a lynching, there's all of these horrible things, and you're kind of asking, but who's playing? Whose play set is it? Who gets to move the figures and who gets to put the things in motion? It kind of makes you think of the Gods on Olympus sort of deciding your fate, and Speaker 2 (35:35): That's Speaker 1 (35:35): Like this kind of, oh, this is eerie, Speaker 2 (35:39): Eerie. I really like Grimm's fairytales, and one of the most inspiring grim fairytales as far as my own writing goes is called How Some Children Play at Slaughter, which is as terrible as it sounds. We hear about a lot of the grim fairytales and they have happy endings, but so many of them are very disturbing. And I think about that piece a lot with these young kids who end up doing this terrible thing, but they think that they're playing mostly the butcher's child, and so he's doing what he is his father doing. And it actually inspired a poem that I wrote about one of my first experiences with discrimination on my first day at a new school in first grade when a little girl told me that black children could not get on the jungle gym. And so I was six years old and this was told to me, and so I called that poem How some Children Play It, discrimination. But yeah, we're doing this, right? We're doing this work with our young people, they're watching what we're doing, and then they learn these stories. Speaker 1 (36:49): This is kind of also making me think of something else. When I was describing to you earlier, my failed attempts to explain the work of Carol Walker to a group of teenagers last night, and I think there's a point where when you're trying to set up the work and it can become so doer or it can end up sounding like a real bummer, and then I was like, but it's also playful. And then as soon as I said it, I was like, is it? I don't know, but I feel like the work is playful. She's Speaker 3 (37:23): Cheeky. We talk a lot about that. That is absolutely part of the experience that she's playing with and bringing you in and you see one thing and then you see that, okay, there's Speaker 2 (37:36): Humor Speaker 3 (37:36): Here as well in her inversions, which Speaker 2 (37:43): Is Speaker 3 (37:43): Just such a mastery. Speaker 1 (37:45): Yeah, I mean, it's gallows humor, but it's humor, so it's like, yeah, you don't want to ever forget. Yes, it is incredibly dark, but she's using caricature and stereotype and I don't know, and maybe that's why I love this work so much is that a lot of my favorite things are both funny and scary and repulsive and alluring. It's all of this yin and yang that's pushing and pulling. Maybe I can tell the way she makes things. Also, I can tell she takes great pleasure and making, and I get, there's a certain like, Speaker 2 (38:18): Oh Speaker 1 (38:18): Yes, I can tell. Oh, this was fun to make. Speaker 2 (38:21): She's an artist who loves the work and is loves enjoying her work for sure. Right. Speaker 3 (38:27): She's going to take you on a journey. Speaker 1 (38:29): Yeah, yeah, Speaker 3 (38:29): Yeah. Speaker 2 (38:30): A little bit history, a little bit satire, a little bit, not taking yourself too seriously and a little bit of really serious about Speaker 1 (38:39): Things. Speaker 3 (38:40): You can have a smirk, you laugh, you have that ability is still here, and she is creating that kind of full experience for the visitor. So you can laugh, you can cry, nothing's off the table and nothing's wrong. There's no wrong way to experience her work. In fact, if one of your reactions is humor, lean into that. What is, follow that as a means of introspection. Peel that back. Speaker 1 (39:17): Yeah. Speaker 2 (39:17): We have placed in the exhibition though space for people who do need to really take a break and respite because we do recognize that while some people can be in the humor and maybe in the flow of it, some people will need to back away, get quiet Speaker 1 (39:35): Again. A lot of the subject matter is very traumatic and Speaker 2 (39:39): There's Speaker 1 (39:41): A lot of violence mean, absolutely. But I also feel like, I don't know, I feel like there's something welcoming also about this work at the same time, and I don't want to make people think it's Speaker 2 (39:52): Not Speaker 1 (39:52): At all friendly. I do think it is sort of friendly work in the way that it is fun to Speaker 4 (39:58): Look Speaker 1 (39:58): At. Speaker 3 (39:59): I mean, it's a spectacle there. Is that part of it, you as participant, as the observer in this panoramic experience, it is a type of a spectacle. Speaker 2 (40:14): I hope that people do have their own experiences in this space. I hope that people feel cared for as well as willing to, to see the motion and the movement and the play, and feel all of the emotions throughout this exhibition. And hopefully it just draws them to want to know more about Kara Walker's work Speaker 3 (40:35): And to return to it. The exhibition just opened, come back in a month and experience again, and you'll see something different. You'll feel something different. And I think that's the beauty of this exhibition is each time you're engaging with her art, you leave with a different impression and different questions to ask yourself. Speaker 1 (41:01): Alright, well thank you so much for chatting with me today. Speaker 3 (41:04): Thanks for having us, Russell. Thank you. Speaker 1 (41:05): Yeah, so great. Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. The museum is currently open, but please visit our website for the most up-to-date information about operating hours and museum policies. Current special exhibitions are Kara Walker, cut to the quick and simply brilliant artist jewelers of the 1960s and 1970s. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and we also have an Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Efron Musico by Bacca La. And as always, please rate and review us to help others find the show. I'm Russell eig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.