Artwork
Boo Hoo
Artist
Kara Walker
(American, born 1969)
DepartmentContemporary Art
Date2000
MediumLinoleum cut
Dimensions40 x 20 1/2 in. (101.6 x 52.1 cm)
Credit LinePurchased with funds provided by the American and European Art Acquisition Fund
Object number2002.9.1
Copyright© Kara Walker
DescriptionAn oval shaped image in black on light-colored paper featuring a woman holding a snake up to her face in her left hand and a whip in her right hand. The woman is crying and wears a garment with a large skirt that is subsumed into a black background in the lower half of the image.Label TextBoo Hoo shows a weeping woman holding a whip, referring to the cruelty of slavery, and a snake, alluding to the serpent that tempted the Biblical Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. Together, these symbols recall the prejudiced legacy of the black female slave as the seductress who, willingly or not, ended up sleeping with her master. Kara Walker appropriates negative racial stereotypes to call attention to the atrocities of slavery, as well as the racism that persists today. Using a black silhouette format that was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for portraiture and decorative arts, she enacts perverse and violent scenes. These scenes are deliberately unsettling and confrontational, aimed at encouraging reflection on racial, gender, and social inequalities.
(Anna Stothart, 2016)InscriptionsAnnotated, lower right corner: PP 4/6SignedSigned and dated, lower left corner; titled, under image: Boo HooNot on view
Collections
Walker Evans
Summer 1936, printed later
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
