On Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) | Kara Walker at SFMOMA
Photo by the author. Artwork © Kara Walker.
It has been around a year and a half since I last saw the show by Kara Walker at SFMOMA. It's called "Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)
A Respite for the Weary Time-Traveler.
Featuring a Rite of Ancient Intelligence Carried out by the Gardeners
Toward the Continued Improvement of the Human Specious
by
Kara E-Walker."
It’s a long name. And I have to Google several words to find out their meaning in English.
In the center, you get stones, dark black stones, as you would see in the most vast and desperate type of film. They are shiny, they are raw, they are pessimistic. Then you see figures standing on top of these stones. They have obvious mechanical arms, mechanical legs. They're strange; they move mechanically. They wear clothes with prints of patterns of cities in silk, in fabric, in cotton, or in black dress.
Maybe because I started to read Toni Morrison again. Then I decided to come down to SFMOMA and see it. It’s free to the public, and I forgot to renew my SFMOMA membership.
For the past year and a half, I keep thinking about Kara Walker. I keep thinking about how she said: "There is a moment in life where one becomes black." I, too, feel it. I felt vulnerable, a lot, for the past year.
So I keep thinking about it. Whenever I feel vulnerable, I think about it. I think about the show. I think about the life, death, the glamorous, the ugly, the pessimistic, the optimistic, the strong, the vulnerable. I hear a bell ring. I hear the bell. I noticed that figures don't spill out of the fortune cookie papers anymore. I loved it. I missed it. I missed fortune cookies. I missed the seemingly deep, thoughtful but totally meaningless words on them. I missed the ones written by Kara Walker.
I feel my own numbness, mechanics, and unsettlement. I feel my own awkwardness. As I am looking at the figures again, I see myself again.
Exhibition
Kara Walker: Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)
SFMOMA, San Francisco
July 1, 2024 – June 7, 2026
Floor 1