Archetype

Archetype

2017
Tape and vinyl on wall

Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
Artist in Residence
January 23 – March 4

Walker built this installation around the Theotokos — the "God-bearer," a cloaked figure that recurs across cultures as a stand-in for the sacred feminine. He worked the figure in tape and wood stencils directly on the gallery wall, stripping it down to a hooded silhouette with no face and no body inside the robe.

The cloaked figure shows up everywhere once you start looking for it — in religious icons, in film, in folklore — always carrying the same charge: someone significant is under there, even though you can't see them. Walker uses that emptiness on purpose. The figure is "bodiless" and "incarnated" at the same time — present in the room, absent in the form.

The work was produced during a residency through Rowan's Artist-in-Residence Program, which puts artists in the gallery to work in front of visitors and engage directly with students.