Kara Walker was born in LaToya Ruby Frazier was born Stockton, California, in 1969. She in 1982 in Braddock, Pennsylvania. She received a BFA from the Atlanta Col- used to work in New York, and currently lege of Art in 1991, and an MFA from lives and works in Chicago. Frazier uses the Rhode Island School of Design photography, video, and performance to in 1994. The artist is best known for document personal and social histories of exploring the raw intersection of race, midwestern America. Frazier has chron- gender, and sexuality through her icled the health and environmental crisis iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker is facing her family and her hometown predominantly a history painter. She since she was a teenager. She employs created scenes based on history, liter- a radical black-and-white documentary ature and the bible, making it new and approach that captures the complexity, relevant to the contemporary world. injustice, and simultaneous hope within Walker’s lengthy literary titles alert us America. She builds visual archives that to her appropriation of traditions, and address industrialism, rustbelt revitaliza- to the historical significance of the tion, environmental justice and healthcare work. inequity, family and communal history. Walker’s famously known silhouettes are essential to the meaning of her work. It is an in- fluential metaphor for the stereotype, as she puts it, “says a lot with very little information.” The silhouette also allows Walker to play tricks with the eye. Often there is not enough information to determine what limbs belong to which figures, or which are in the foreground or background, ambiguities that force us to question what we know and see. Walker’s imag- es are about racism in the present, and the vast social and economic inequalities that persist in dividing America. They are more like riddles that are complex, multi-layered works that reveal their meaning gradually over time. While Walker’s work draws heavily on traditions of storytelling, she freely blends fact and fiction using her imagination to complete the pic- ture.

Frazier communicates a lot of the same messages as Walker but their visual represen- tations and sometimes context of their ideas can be the place where they differ. For instance, Frazier focuses more on recent events, where Walker goes a lot into the past and historical events with her work. I believe both artist have the same messages when it comes to social injustices especially with race and gender equalities, but every artist is different and all have their own ways of expressing those ideas and execut- ing them. Reader name: Date: Age:

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