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until 04.04. | #4861ARTatBerlin | Sprüth Magers Berlin shows from 14. November 2025 (Vernissage: 13.11.) the exhibition “Kara Elizabeth Walker presents Dispatches from A— and the Museum of Half-remembered Histories” by the artist Kara Walker.
Kara Walker’s œuvre scrutinises themes of race, gender, sexuality and violence, showcasing a profound exploration of societal complexities and positioning her as a preeminent figure among contemporary American artists. At Sprüth Magers, Berlin, Walker debuts all-new cutout collages in vibrant ink and watercolour. Presented on a grand scale akin to history paintings, these works build upon her iconic monochromatic silhouettes by harnessing the power of formal composition, texture and colour. The show is completed by new pastels that reimagine traditional genres and several arresting watercolour drawings.
For her new series of works, Walker draws inspiration from an illustrated popular history of the United States from the 1870s to explore how the creation of history is negotiated—a negotiation that continues to this day, beneath the surface of her homeland’s difficult realities. By examining this post-Civil War source, she questions the mechanisms by which American identity has been constructed and mythologized. She employs vibrant paper cutouts, skillfully blending fluid, expressive layers of color with sharply defined forms to create scenes that depict America’s violent historical and recent past, prompting critical reflection on their impact on present-day reality. In artworks such as Tituba’s Servants (2025), she commands historical imagery and art history – drawing on references to the Salem witch trials as well as works by John Singer Sargent and Diego Velázquez – and transforms these elements into astute commentaries that critique the prevailing narratives that emerged from a pivotal moment when the nation’s fundamental contradictions between freedom and oppression were actively rewritten and glossed over for mass consumption.
In “Liberation (after Ben Shahn)” (2025), one of the exhibition’s large-scale collages, Walker reinterprets Ben Shahn’s 1945 scene depicting children playing amidst war rubble. While Shahn’s image balances despair and hope through the resilience of childhood play, Walker’s version strips any semblance of innocence. Instead of swinging children, lifeless figures hang like flags from poles—a haunting imagery that symbolizes the lives sacrificed in the name of war and simultaneously evokes the brutal public lynchings used to terrorize and control Black people, particularly in the American South. In the foreground, a child plays with a hoop and stick, oblivious to the horrors unfolding. Walker’s version is far darker than Shahn’s, revealing how trauma becomes an inescapable backdrop to childhood and how violence is normalized and passed down as inherited wounds to subsequent generations.
The progressive decline of democracy permeates many of the artworks in the exhibition. The monumental paper-cut diptych “Inaugural Fantasia” (2025) presents a visual vortex of intertwined, naked bodies, some of which resemble political figures. The work functions as a critique of the fetishization of political and military power and suggests an almost sexual obsession with authority and dominance over feminized bodies that accompanies the decline of democracy. Walker often contrasts beauty with brutality, intimacy, and exploitation, as seen in “Cypher of the Old Republick” and “Cypher for the New Republick” (both 2025). In both works, the body parts—heads, legs, and arms—form loosely circular compositions. Through their allusions to Philip Guston’s hooded Ku Klux Klan figures and titles that refer to an old and a new state, they illustrate the ongoing cycle of violence. Together, the works demonstrate how power structures intrude into private life and how authority has always operated through the violation of bodies, particularly in the lingering shadow of slavery.
Opening: Thursday, 13. November 2025, 6-8 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 14. November 2025 – Saturday, 4. April 2026
To the gallery
Titel image caption: Kara Walker. Cypher for the New Republick, 2025. Watercolor and sumi-e ink on cut paper on paper. 199.4 × 192.1 cm.
Exhibition Kara Walker – Sprüth Magers Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
