A void of white, monochrome, spaciousness, Barbara Walker has created a white cube in artistic, two-dimensional form through her series of Vanishing Point. This white cube is also punctuated by a human presence, finely carved out of the seemingly solid mass of white using graphite. The precision of the medium, coupled with its dark tones, draws attention instantly to the figure, despite her periphery positioning at the edge of the work. Playing with ideas of vision and ways of seeing, Walker has reintroduced the black figures of Renaissance art, so often sidelined and neglected, just as they have been in historical sources. The invisible is now made visible.
There is a certain sculptural tendency to the work of Walker. Due to the monochrome methods, the harsh juxtaposition of white and black, two-dimensional quickly becomes three-dimensional, giving a sense of solidity, weight and mass to the black figure here, and therefore permanence. This increases her presence, the protruding shoulder and twisting body pushing out from the blankness of the paper. The dress that falls slightly off the shoulder of the figure gives more attention to her skin, allowing Walker to deepen the tones of graphite, producing an even more forceful contrast between black and white. There is a certain irony to Walker’s work. It seems such a simplistic idea, to reverse the narrative, to expose what was once hidden. History has never been so black and white, yet with simplicity and a startlingly effective result, Walker suggests it can be.
Recently exhibited at the Fitzwilliam Museum’s ‘Black Atlantic’ exhibition, the revealing of difficult and previously neglected or hidden histories was the unifying factor behind artworks past and present. Along with this narrative of revealing, Walker also conflates old and new, using the work of Renaissance and Early Modern artists – in this example it is Titian’s Diana and Actaeon – to switch the focus from white to black. Through blind embossing, the original painting is hardly present, an array of vague shapes that merge and melt together, non-representational and devoid of any true meaning, subject or presence. Meanwhile, the figure who was Diana’s maidservant is now isolated and in the spotlight, a commanding presence stamped onto the paper and accordingly now tattooed onto the viewer’s brain. The woman is no longer associated with the goddess she tended to in Titian’s work, but occupies her own space and has the work all to herself. The huge, white void that she presents to the viewer, stretching out her arms in both directions to emphasise the expanse before her, highlights the neglect she has faced through previous constructions of history. Only now, Walker literally whitewashes, bringing the untold stories to the surface. The work becomes a reorientation of both the prominence of black figures in canonical works of art, but also a wider reorientation of our historical understanding.
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