The Celebrated American, Kara Walker, Negress.

A couple of weeks back I saw what I consider to be the finest free exhibition I have seen this year. I didn't write straight away though as it needed careful consideration. As a white English man I have to approach the exhibition with a delicacy that Kara Walker, a black American woman, has chosen to avoid. There are strong clues as to why this is in the full title of the exhibition: "We at Camden Arts Centre are Exceedingly Proud to Present an Exhibition of Capable Artworks by the Notable Hand of the Celebrated American, Kara Elizabeth Walker, Negress." If ever there were a loaded and evocative title it were this and it sets the tone for the whole show.

Walker appears to start from the premise that modern race relations, especially in America, have their origins in slavery and this history affects both how white people see black people and how black people see themselves. As such, she sees the importance of reclaiming slavery from the history books, removing the veneer of politeness that Hollywood, the passage of time and the reduction of slavery to a set of facts and figures has brought and making it alive, real and visceral again. To this end, the exhibition goes to some serious extremes. The Arts Centre describe it as explicit, I prefer to call it unflinching and from here on in this post will touch on some difficult things.

The first room sets the tone. Three walls are covered in cartoonish silhouettes, clearly recognisable as negroes (and I use the word with due consideration here) or whites, using over the top facial features and outfits to instantly distinguish the two races. By and large the figures on the left are slaves and the figures on the right are slavers and soldiers - although there are a few interlopers on each side. There is a great deal of interaction between the figures, especially at the border between the two races. Much of it is violent and the closer you look the less cartoonish it becomes. A soldier's gun explodes as he tries to shoot a black girl. A white Southern lady examines the decapitated head of a slave. A black man tries to tear the penis from a white soldier. Various body parts fly across the wall. Hands are forced inside of or emerge from other people. I had the distinct impression that a lot of the vignettes were based on specific stories but I neither knew them nor needed to. With or without knowledge, the vitality and complexity made the installation incredibly engaging. I couldn't help but think of Punch and Judy, the traditional English puppet show for children, which treads some of the same ground but without the racial element and to very different effect. In Punch and Judy, domestic battery is played for laughs but here that same stylisation and humour is used with a more serious intent.

On the fourth wall is one of the most powerful new drawings I have seen for many, many years. "Sketch for an American Comic Opera with 20th century Race Riots" is a huge, vigorous piece which at first glance is dominated by an old fashioned fat, white man in full evening dress and a vast pall of smoke. On examination though, the painting is a history of the USA through race relations and it may prove to be a foretelling as well. The bottom of the drawing is a writhing mass of black people, with reaching limbs and distorted faces. Some shelter from the smoke, but most are caught up in or protecting themselves from a cartoonish flow emanating from or sucking them into the white man's belly. This white man, casually chatting to a friend, has a negress at his feet and he is holding something in her mouth. She pathetically reaches towards him. Is he turning her into a walking stick? suckling  her? force feeding her? stabbing her? On such ambiguities the drawing hangs. Beside the white man, a woman with (in Walker's visual language) a black facial structure but pale skin sweeps up the writhing mass of blacks. Again, this begs questions - has she on some level become white? (a theme which is perhaps touched on elsewhere in the show) is she a ghost? or is she simply that way for reasons of design? The left of the drawing shows destruction in the aftermath of a unspecified race riot. There are striped, cartoon movement lines here, and much broken glass which is very star-like in places here. The flames and smoke come from this section and it is hard not to see it as a torn and burning Stars and Stripes. The smokes keeps drawing the eye back to the white man's belly and the writhing mass of black people caught up in its influence. I can't help but read the drawing as a proclamation that the history of Black America's woes is the story of White America's greed. Whether its a view one agrees with or not, there is no escaping the force with it is put across.

The other two rooms contain more drawings and an astonishing video of a shadow puppet play which - to warn any visitors - contains explicit recreations of sex, rape and murder. They draw on the historically difficult relationship between race, gender and power in brutal and unflinching ways - but I've already written too much for one day. Suffice to say, if you can get to Camden and if you can stomach the fact that the subject matter is treated without any of the layers of politeness that history uses to make it palatable, go and go with an open mind. I don't claim to know if she is right or not but if, as Walker appears to be saying, this is how America became one of the things that it is then it is important politically. Without a doubt, it is that rarest of things - an exhibition which is personal, beautiful, thought provoking, difficult, uncompromising and totally engaging so for me, that makes it hugely important artistically.

It runs until January 5 at the Camden Arts Centre.