Kara Walker (born in 1969) is a prominent figure in the field of contemporary African American visual arts. She is a distinguished artist who has won several prizes and held exhibitions in different countries all over the world. In her art Walker re-imagines pictorially the past of slavery over and over again, as she represents the horrors of the American South of that period in very specific ways. Walker is best known for her black cut-paper silhouettes displayed on white walls. This choice of colours already underlines the racial division in the antebellum South. Walker's art is generally prized by white art critics, but reviewed more critically by African American audiences.

This essay examines the ways in which Walker's silhouettes have been experienced as threatening. Her art seems to confuse our understanding of the past and the present, by bringing something from the past into the present. This is perceived as a threat, as we tend to understand the past as departed and finalised, and do not expect any of its spectres to haunt the present moment. Walker's art, in its use of a particular pictography, has been condemned as offensive by the African American art community because it brings painful images from the past into the present. Here I read such forms of art, perceived as threatening, in relation to Sigmund Freud's theory of the uncanny, which emphasises the importance of understanding a dreadful element of the present in relation to something old and familiar that has been repressed.