Sundays, Silhouettes, and Sleeplessness

So in an effort to jumpstart our conference preparation, my dear friend J and I had an all-night theory extravaganza that began with meticulous organization of our compiled resources to put off digging our heels in and ended with an early-morning screening of Lars von Trier's, Melancholia (deserving of a month of posts and certainly deserving of a mental acuity that just isn't feasible today on this total and utter lack of sleep). However, as I began to flesh out my latest paper ideas on race, Black male incarceration in the Southeast, and its correlation to a narratological structure of imprisonment and deprivation, I kept coming back to images by one of my favorite artists, Kara Walker. Her simple, though extraordinarily poignant, cut-paper silhouettes are some of the most haunting images I have seen to date (save for Ana Mendieta and her headless chicken piece. . . but that's neither here nor there).

http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker