Andre Jacobs, a master of fine arts student at Norfolk State University, stood next to “Boo-Hoo,” one of Kara Walker’s iconic silhouettes, as he gave an off-the-cuff interview for an Instagram audience.
He was explaining the meaning of the work and how it has inspired him as an oil painter; Jacobs shared that Walker challenges “racism, sexism and the sexualization of Black women’s bodies,” but not by creating “a counternarrative,” as many other artists do.
Walker used the black silhouette format, which was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. She depicted a Black woman in period dress crying as she holds in one hand a whip as a symbol of the atrocities of slavery and, in the other, a snake as a biblical reference to seduction. In this way, said Jacobs, she “walked right into the fire” by putting “everything right in front of you: how you are portrayed, how you are received.”…