History And Identity

With the deepening of globalization and the rapid development of communication technology,the frequent movement,encounter and collision of people and cultures,the consequences of colonialism gradually surfaced,and identity contradictions deepened on a global scale.Driven by socio-political struggles,philosophical developments,and linguistic concerns,"identity" has become a central theme of intense discussion in the field of cultural studies since the 90 s of the 20 th century,and has also received widespread attention in the contemporary art world.A large number of artists have emerged among contemporary artists who use artistic practice as a means of identity politics,most of them victims of colonialism,racism and patriarchy.Kara Walker(1969-)is one of the most popular African-American female artists of our time and an important representative of the contemporary black artist community,and the identity labels "black" and "female" have always been the most important keywords in her artistic practice.Walker is keen to use a wealth of integrated media tools,including silhouettes,public sculptures,films,paintings,etc.,to "restore history" as the basic strategy to reconstruct and denounce unrealistic black stereotypes and clichés of history,and expose racist and patriarchal conspiracies.In his more than thirty years of creative career,Walker has received widespread recognition and applause,but he has also suffered many doubts and criticisms for his presentation of negative images of black people.Based on the global context,starting from the interdisciplinary perspective of combining art history and cultural studies,based on Carla Walker’s artistic achievements,this paper selects his most representative large-scale silhouette projects and large-scale public sculpture projects as the research objects,combines history,sociology,postcolonialism,feminism,body theory,psychoanalytic theory and other research methods,and deeply explores the identity metaphor,historical construction and ideological expression behind the works by analyzing the era background,artistic language and style characteristics of the works.Also examine the controversy that has arisen.In short,first of all,through the study of Kara Walker’s torture of history and identity in art,the dusty colonial history and identity memory leapt to the page,injecting new corpus and new texts into the academic research on identity issues,and also bringing enlightenment to the creation of a new generation of artists.Secondly,it is conducive to awakening the public’s true memory of identity and triggering the public’s attention and reflection on identity issues;Thirdly,it is helpful to discover the meaning and value of identity art and the future development direction in the contemporary society full of complexity,especially in the context of "post-identity" in Europe and the United States.Finally,the study of identity art is conducive to promoting the humanitarian development of contemporary academia and public society,and has practical value for the benign process of social civilization equality.