This talk will analyse the material and affective implications of internationally-recognised artist Kara Walker’s recent turn to public sculpture and the connections she draws between the rawness of slavery’s memory in the US and the UK. Her two anti-monuments, A Subtlety (2014) and Fons Americanus (2019), depart from the drawings and cut-vinyl tableaux for which Walker is most known, connecting two prominent locales within the Black Atlantic world’s development. This turning point in her practice pivots on Walker’s unruly manipulations of the Black female form, namely the mammy and the Sable Venus, into a kind of power bottom that forces a distinction between Black women’s creative labors (as artists and caregivers) and art’s capacity to mitigate historical trauma.
Dr Tiffany E. Barber is an award-winning scholar, curator, and critic whose work reshapes staid understandings of race, gender, and representation. A sought-after voice in contemporary art, culture, and fashion, her expert commentary spans academic journals, museum exhibitions, acclaimed documentaries, and major media outlets like The Nation and Huffington Post. As Assistant Professor of African American Art at UCLA, Dr Barber blends art history, performance theory, and Black feminist thought in ways that challenge institutions to advance new cultural futures. She is author of Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women’s Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation (NYU Press, 2025).
Organised by Professor Dorothy Price FBA, Executive Dean and Deputy Director, and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Critical Race Art History at the Courtauld Institute, as part of the Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas, directed by Professor Jo Applin.
