Kara Walker’s “Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with an ensemble of seven automatons enacting a mix of chance and choreographed movements. Photo: Marissa Leshnov for The New York Times.
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
Kara Walker has long been recognized for her incisive examinations of the dynamics of power and the exploitation of race and sexuality. In the last decade, she has extended her practice beyond her signature cut-paper silhouettes and drawings to embrace monumental installations that further challenge communal memory as shaped and concretized through the institutions of state, museum and church.
Walker’s multi-part installation Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) is inspired by a wide range of sources, from antique dolls to Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, to Bunraku puppetry and historical ephemera. Through Walker’s singular vision, these disparate references come together to consider the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society. Here, automatons trapped in a never-ending cycle of ritual and struggle are repositories of the human soul. They recall mechanized medieval icons that evidenced divinity, vitality, and the promise of faith. Situated within an energetically charged field of black obsidian from Mt. Konocti in Lake County—a volcanic glass with deep spiritual properties—Walker’s Gardeners evoke wonder, reflection, respite, and hope. Just past this prophetic vignette, the installation’s namesake, Fortuna, responds to each visitor with a choreographed gesture and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth: an offering of absolution and contemplation.
Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curated by Eungie Joo, curator and head of contemporary art, with Alison Guh, curatorial associate of contemporary art. To create the elaborate presentation, Walker has collaborated with technical lead Noah Feehan, the design and engineering studio Hypersonic, couturier Gary Graham, and fabrication company New Project.
Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) is on view in the admissions-free Roberts Family Gallery through Spring 2026. To learn more, click here.
The artist Kara Walker preparing a robot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Photo: Ari Marcopoulos.
READ: “Kara Walker is No One’s Robot” by Hilarie M. Sheets for The New York Times.
At SFMOMA, the artist enacts a parable about trauma and healing in Black life — and makes her first foray into robotics. “I went down a little sci-fi rabbit hole the last couple years working on this piece.”