KARA WALKER
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"A Subtlety (also known as the Marvelous Sugar Baby and subtitled 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 on the Occasion
of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant) is a 2014 piece of
installation art by American artist Kara Walker. A Subtlety was dominated
by its central piece, a white sculpture depicting a woman with African features
in the shape of a sphinx, but also included fifteen other sculptures. These
fifteen "attendants" to the sphinx were enlarged versions of contemporary
blackamoors produced in China.
The piece was installed in the Domino Sugar Factory in the Williamsburg
neighborhood of Brooklyn from May through July 2014. Although thematically
consistent with Walker's earlier work, its scope and presentation were departures
from her oeuvre.
The project was commissioned by Creative Time and underwritten by New York-based
real estate development company Two Trees, and was built with donated materials.
The exhibition sparked conversations about the show's audience, the gentrification
of Brooklyn, and the work's themes of race, sexuality, oppression, labor,
and the ephemeral."