116 Time October 21–28, 2019
“i’m fascinaTed by The grandeur,
the pompousness, the overmuch,” says
Kara Walker. That sensibility fueled the
American artist’s latest creation, Fons
Americanus—a 13-m-high fountain un-
veiled Sept. 30 in London’s Tate Modern
museum. With a cast of characters and
iconography reflecting the intertwined his-
tories of Africa, Europe and America, Fons
Americanus presents the brutality of slav-
ery in a subversively joyful setting.
Walker is known for her ambitious
work across mediums interrogating race,
sexuality, slavery and identity; her 2014
installation A Subtlety was housed in
Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Factory, at-
tracting over 130,000 visitors to the main
giant- sphinx sculpture. Fons Americanus
is Walker’s fourth site-specific work, and it
references classical British artists such as
J.M.W. Turner and William Blake, as well
as African- American historical figures in-
cluding Emmett Till and Marcus Garvey.
The artist was inspired in part by Lon-
don’s Victoria Memorial, a towering, ma-
jestic monument to the Queen who com-
mandeered the British Empire. “I just got
this jazzy feeling,” she says. “I’m interested
in ways allegorical figures are misrepresen-
tative of the thing they’re meant to sym-
bolize.” Tributes to empire in the U.K., like
Confederate statues in the U.S., have come
under scrutiny in recent years, as observers
reconsider how frequently immortalized
figures also played key roles in the oppres-
sion of others. “Public space creates the
opportunity for misinterpretation,” says
Walker. “In some ways, I think my work is
a misreading of empire.”
The contrast between the fantasy and the
reality, the big and the small, forms the basis
for Fons Americanus: “This is about the story
I could tell with my own hand, which is per-
haps second-class, and unseen or unheard,”
says Walker, “and the story that is larger than
it ought to be, than it has a right to be.” And
while some monuments to empire have been
dismantled, Walker is more concerned with
what will take their place. “Who are we now,
and what are we saying now as a people be-
sides removing something?” she asks. “What
do we build in its stead?” •
TimeOff Art
FEATURE
Reimagining the
empire
By Suyin Haynes
THE WATER
“It was all about the water, in a way,” says Walker. She was
influenced by time spent in Rome, home to the spectacular
Baroque Trevi Fountain. Early on, Walker decided that water
would be an integral part of the installation and would symbolize
the oceans that slaves were forcibly transported across, as well
as a metaphorical connection between the shared histories and
identities of Africa, Europe and America.