Bureau of Refugees

This book features works from the new series “Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands — Records, ‘Miscellaneous Papers’ National Archives M809 Roll 23,” named after the historical record that documents, among other things, atrocities against freed blacks during Reconstruction. These small, economically rendered cutouts reflect on the sad, repetitive nature of racist atrocities, as well as art’s tenuous relationship with the real world of political injustice. Also included are paintings with collaged elements and Walker’s signature silhouettes, and a work consisting solely of handwritten texts in which the artist meditates on the “perpetrator” as well as willing and unwilling victims of circumstance.