Unmanned Drone
Unmanned Drone, 2023
Bronze statue made from Charles Keck's 1921 statue of Stonewall Jackson, which stood in Charlottesville, Virginia and was decommissioned in 2021
156 x 132 x 56 in. (396.2 x 335.3 x 142.2 cm.)
Commissioned by The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
Filed Under:
Kara Walker
(b. 1969, Stockton, California; lives in New York)
Stonewall Jackson’s success on the battlefield made him an instant celebrity in the South during the Civil War. When he died at Chancellorsville in 1863, he became a martyr to the Confederacy, and some proponents of the Lost Cause posit the South would have been victorious had he not died. Memorials to the dead general cropped up all over the South, including Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, and Stone Mountain in Georgia. In Charles Keck’s equestrian statue, installed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1921 and removed in 2021, Jackson appeared charging into battle, his finely articulated horse in full gallop and the detritus of war—broken wagon wheels, dead brush, cannon balls—trampled beneath. Allegorical figures of Faith and Valor on the granite base alluded to the Lost Cause tenets often attributed to Confederate soldiers.
For MONUMENTS, Kara Walker transformed Keck’s monument by dismembering—literally—Stonewall and his horse Little Sorrel piece by piece with a plasma cutter. She reduced the statue to its commensurate parts, then welded them back together, reconfiguring the horse and rider into a colossal phantasmagoria. The horse’s front and back legs are fused at the haunches so that its stride is condensed to the back third of the statue’s ballast. The bodies of the general and his mount fold in on one another, turning the ubiquitous equestrian statue quite literally on its head. Little Sorrel’s nose protrudes perversely out of its own belly. This mass of limbs and Confederate regalia would not be out of place in one of Walker’s silhouette works, both tonally and compositionally. The work elicits horror, confusion, amusement, and awe—it is a spectacle in the truest sense of the word.
At face value, Keck’s statue memorialized a Confederate war hero. Its latent meaning, however, was clear to the Black residents of Charlottesville. It was commissioned specifically for a park built on courthouse-adjacent land that was seized by the county government from Black home and business owners with the claim that the area was blighted. Walker makes manifest the monstrosity of venerating Confederate figures—men who enslaved other human beings and fought for a white ethnostate that permanently inscribed chattel slavery in its founding document. With surgical precision, she has untangled the web of Lost Cause ideology and exposed it as the Frankenstein fabrication it truly is.
Often left out of the conversation around the removal of Confederate monuments are the granite bases. While the bronze likenesses of Confederate figures wield conceptual weight, their physical weight pales in comparison to that of their stone bases. In her nose-to-tail approach to repurposing this monument, Walker has created a sculptural installation utilizing sixteen tons of the granite base. She turned the carved slabs face down, exposing the pockmarked interiors that were once bolted to a concrete core. Then, using headstone fabrication processes, she sandblasted silhouette imagery evocative of the carved figures on the other side of the granite that is no longer visible to the viewer.
Kara Walker
New York-based artist Kara Walker is best known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide.
Born in Stockton, California in 1969, Walker was raised in Atlanta, Georgia from the age of 13. She studied at the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1991) and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1994). She is the recipient of many awards, notably the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997 and the United States Artists, Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. In 2012, Walker became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2015, she was named the Tepper Chair in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Her work can be found in museums and public collections throughout the United States and Europe including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt.
Walker’s major survey exhibition, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, was organized by The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis where it premiered in February 2007 before traveling to ARC/ Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at the Art Institute of Chicago; Camden Arts Centre in London; and Metropolitan Arts Center (MAC) in Belfast.
During the spring of 2014, Walker’s first large scale public project, a monumental installation entitled A Subtlety: Or… the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, was on view at the abandoned Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Commissioned and presented by Creative Time, the project – a massive sugar covered sphinx-like sculpture – responded to and reflected on troubled history of sugar.
As a special project of the 2015 Venice Biennale, Walker was selected as director, set and costume designer for the production of Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma at Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy.
Unmanned Drone, 2023
Bronze statue made from Charles Keck's 1921 statue of Stonewall Jackson, which stood in Charlottesville, Virginia and was decommissioned in 2021
156 x 132 x 56 in. (396.2 x 335.3 x 142.2 cm.)
Commissioned by The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
Unmanned Drone
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
Unmanned Drone (detail)
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
Unmanned Drone (detail)
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
Star Spangled, 2023
Lithichrome paint on sandblasted granite, steel base
42 x 86 x 92 in.)
Commissioned by The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
Star Spangled
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
Ghost, 2023
Lithichrome paint on sandblasted granite, steel base
36 x 91 x 66 in. (91.4 x 231.1 x 167.6 cm.)
Commissioned by The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
Ghost
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
Tread, 2023
Lithichrome paint on sandblasted granite, steel base
14 x 122 x 50 in. (35.6 x 309.9 x 127 cm.)
Commissioned by The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
Tread
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
Tread
Photo by Frederik Nilsen
The Baltimore Sun · Nov 24, 1934
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Confederate Veteran Magazine · Mar 1902
The Evening Sun · Mar 21, 1977
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The Montgomery Advertiser· Jan 7, 1890
Ingots from Robert E. lee Monument, Charlottesville, Virginia
Swords Into Plowshares
2023
Bronze
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, Charlottesville, Virginia
Josephus Daniels
János Farkas
1985
Bronze
Daniels Family Charitable Foundation, Raleigh, North Carolina
Roger B. Taney
William Henry Rinehart
1887
Bronze
City of Baltimore, Maryland
Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson
Laura Gardin Fraser
1948
Bronze
City of Baltimore, Maryland
Matthew Fontaine Maury
Frederick William Sievers
1929
Bronze
Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
Jefferson Davis & Vindicatrix
Edward V. Valentine
1907
Bronze
The Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia
Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
Fragments from Robert E. Lee monument base
Paul Pujol
1890
Granite
Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
W. Jeff Davis Ave. & Rosa L. Parks Ave. & Fred Gray Ave.
Aluminum
City of Montgomery, Alabama
Unmanned Drone
Kara Walker
2023
Bronze statue made from Chales Keck's 1921 statue of Stonewall Jackson, which stood in Charlottesville Virginia and was decomissioned in 2021
Commissioned by The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
HOMEGOING
Davóne Tines & Julie Dash
2025
Two channel video projection (color, sound)
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Courtesy of the artists
Tabernacle
Martin Puryear
2019
Steel, red cedar, American cypress, pine, makore veneer, canvas, printed cotton fabric, glass, stainless steel
Glenstone Museum
Studio Portraits
Hugh Mangum
Untitled, ca. 1897-1922
Courtesy of the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Rate of Transformation, Distance
Torkwase Dyson
2018/2025
Wood and acrylic
Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery
An American Reflection
Monument Lab
2025
Digital video (black and white; sound)
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Courtesy of the artist
The Warden
Cauleen Smith
2025
CCTV camera, single-channel live feed video
Courtesy of the artist and Morán Morán
White Shoes series
Nona Faustine
Ye Are My Witness, Brooklyn, NY, 2018
Pigment Print
Courtesy of the Estate of Nona Faustine and Higher Pictures
Practice, Practice, Practice
Kevin Jerome Everson
2024
Single channel video projection transferred from 16 mm film (black and white; sound)
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Courtesy of the artist
New Nation (States) Battle of Manassas - 2014
Kahlil Robert Irving
2024-2025
Cast bronze
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Courtesy of the artist
Cadence Series
Walter Price
Evidence of progression, 2023
Acrylic and gesso on canvas
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Private collection
Confederate Soldiers & Sailors
Frederick W. Ruckstuhl
1903
Bronze
City of Baltimore, Maryland
Birth of a Nation
Stan Douglas
2025
Five-channel video installation (color; silent)
Commissioned by the Hartwig Art Foundation with The Brick
Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner
Deo Vindice
(Orion's Cabinet)
Abigail DeVille
2025
China cabinets, charcoal, rusted steel scaffolding, pig blood, salt, mud, lights, and natural fiber
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Courtesy of the artist
Descendant
Karon Davis
2025
Plywood, MDF, latex paint, metal hardware, steel, aluminum, fiberglass
Commissioned by MOCA and The Brick
Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94
Love is dangerous
Bethany Collins
2024-2025
Pink granite
Commissioned by MOCA & The Brick
Courtesy of the artist; Alexander Gray Associates, New York; and PATRON Gallery, Chicago
The Baltimore Sun · Oct 21, 1923
A Suspension of Hostilities
Hank Willis Thomas
2019
1969 Dodge Charger
Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery
The Klan Series
Andres Serrano
Klansman, Grand Dragon, 1990
Pigment print
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia
The Montgomery Times (Montgomery, Alabama)
Sat, Apr 22, 1905
Confederate Women of Maryland
J. Maxwell Miller
1917
Bronze
City of Baltimore, Maryland
Number 363
Leonardo Drew
2023
Cotton and matte medium
Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
Stranger Fruit Series
Jon Henry
Untitled #31, 2017
Digital archival print on matte paper
Courtesy of the artist
The Baltimore Sun · Oct 26, 1918
The Baltimore Sun · May 14, 1933
The Montgomery Times (Montgomery, Alabama) Sat, Apr 22, 1905