Kara Walker’s large-scale murals—featuring black paper silhouettes of antebellum figures to “explore the complicated intersection between race, gender and sexuality in America” (Rose Miyatsu)—are some of the artist’s best-known works. But have you seen this intricate, pop-up artists book, titled Freedom: A Fable, that she made in 1997? Silhouetted vignettes and an accompanying text tell the tale of an emancipated female slave, whose so-called freedom is punctuated by violence and discrimination. Even on a small scale, the medium proves a powerful means of telling difficult but important stories. As Walker herself has said, “The silhouette lends itself to avoidance of the subject—of not being able to look at it directly—yet there it is, all the time, staring you in the face.”
