Make the Time: Kara Walker’s Sugar Sculpture in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Kara Walker, the world-renowned African-American visual artist and recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1997, has created a sugar sculpture, entitled A Subtlety, which is on view in the former Domino sugar factory storage shed in Brooklyn through July 6th. The space originally was used to store raw sugar before it was bleached.

The work of art, an enormous African-American woman in a sphinx-like pose, has many layers of meaning. The sugar is a reference to black workers in the cane fields; the subtitle of the sculpture is, The Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World. The artist also claims the sugar references the industrial process in general and the practice of “purifying” (whitening) within that process. In addition, the sculpture, which has exaggerated breasts and genitals, references gender abuse between female slaves and their masters. These features also indicate a source of this figure’s power.

To read an article about the sculpture written by Blake Glopnik for the New York Times, click here.