Walkers sugar
"Mommy makes mean art," was the judgment that the artist's daughter, Octavia, delivered 12 years ago, when she was 4, and that gets pretty close to the truth. Awarding Ms. Walker a $190,000 "genius" grant in 1997, the MacArthur Foundation noted that Ms. Walker's images explored the "vestiges of sexual, physical, and racial exploitation" handed down by slavery. She has portrayed sex of every conceivable kind between master and mistress and slave; her panoramic views of the antebellum south include scenes of defecation, amputation, emasculation and decapitation. Violent, yes, but Ms. Walker also sees an absurdist side to the gore in her work.