Kara Walker – Keys to the Coop

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SKU: 31800

Artwork Description

Kara Walker – Keys to the Coop

Dimensions: 51.5 x 74.5″ framed / 42.5 x 64″ paper
Year: 1997
Medium: linocut on paper
Edition: ed. 40

The Keys to the Coop 1997 consists of a large linoleum silhouette printed in black ink that is mounted on white wove paper and features a young girl and a chicken composed in a cartoon-like style. The girl, who is seen in profile, wears a ragged short-sleeved dress and lace-up boots. She appears to be chasing the headless bird that has its feet and wings raised in a startled fashion on the left side of the work. The girl twirls a key (to which the title seems to refer) on one of her fingers, while in the other hand she holds a feathery object – possibly the chicken’s head – to her open mouth, from which the silhouette of her tongue protrudes. This print is number one in an edition of forty.

The Keys to the Coop was produced by the American artist Kara Walker in Providence, Rhode Island, where Walker completed a Masters of Fine Art at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Walker began making paper cut-outs in 1993, creating silhouettes by drawing on black paper or linoleum with grease pencils or pastel crayons and then cutting out figures using a knife. The cut-outs are composed in reverse and then flipped for display, with the final figures mounted on canvas, wood or, as is the case with this work, on paper, while many of Walker’s larger silhouettes are affixed directly onto the gallery wall using wax.

Walker’s work has frequently explored the depiction of racial stereotypes in the United States, and in a 2011 interview she said, ‘The primary situation in my work is that of the African-American telling her story’ (Walker in ‘In the Studio: Kara Walker with Steel Stillman’, Art in America, May 2011, p.94). The Keys to the Coop can be seen to explore imagery and ideas often associated with slavery and African-American history. Walker’s depiction of a chicken may allude to how that animal has commonly been perceived as a favoured food for black people in the United States. Furthermore, in a 2005 article on this work, the art historian Alisa Swindell claimed that the girl’s ‘consumption of the usually discarded part of the chicken is a reminder that the slaves were underfed or given poor, generally unwanted cuts of meat, such as the head, feet, or entrails’ (Swindell 2005, p.6). As well as alluding to a chicken coop, the title of this work may be a reference to broader notions of containment, such as those involved in slavery, and their attendant power relations, where control over the ‘keys’ is paramount. In this respect, the girl’s action in the work may seem like an act of rebellion, albeit one that conforms to stereotypes concerning the wild and uncivilised behaviour of slaves.