Kara Walker

Known for: silhouette cut-outs addressing race and American history; A Subtlety (2014)

Kara Walker developed a practice of large-scale silhouette cut-outs — antebellum scenes of extreme racial and sexual violence, drawn from the visual culture of the American South — that generated immediate controversy when she first showed them at age 24 in 1994. Her A Subtlety (2014), a monumental sphinx made of sugar installed in the Domino Sugar Refinery in Brooklyn before its demolition, drew more than 130,000 visitors in two months. She has also worked in film, shadow puppetry, and book illustration.