Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University College London : B - Fine Art
Shame, disgust and idealization in Kara Walker's Gone: A Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred Between the Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994)
This chapter was commissioned by the editors following a presentation at the conference Shame and Sexuality (2006) held at the Freud Museum, London, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality (1905).
It makes a vital contribution to the vast secondary literature on the work of the artist by combining rigorous psychoanalytic critique of the abject nature of inter-racial sex as depicted in her work with careful attention to the experience of viewing the work as an installation and the disappearance and appearance of its narrative structure as one moves through it, which is absent in the literature.
This was reviewed as part of Shame and Sexuality by Elphis Christopher in Psychodynamic Practice 2009 15: 2, pp214-219 and also led to an invitation to contribute to a panel discussion at Tate Modern ‘Sex and Shame in the visual arts’ 3rd Dec 2008 alongside Professors Claire Pajaczkowska, Tamar Garb and Griselda Pollock.
