Kara Walker and Hilton Als
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Kara Walker and Hilton Als

In the sketches, paper murals, and projections of Kara Walker, precisely drawn figures interact in highly animated dramas that call into question the viewer’s relationship to the heavy-hitting issues of contemporary American social politics: race, gender, sexuality, and our national history of slavery. An interest in these players is shared by writer and critic Hilton Als, whose book The Women presents a meditation on the roles gender and race play in the forging of personal identity and relationships. Join Walker and Als for a conversation on Walker’s work and the contemporary portrayal of “the Negress,” a term they both employ to generate a discussion of these issues.

An installation of Walker’s drawings, paper murals, and animation is on view in the exhibition Quartet: Barney, Gober, Levine, Walker in the Friedman Gallery. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker as well as a theater critic, script writer, and editor.