A Subtlety
In late spring of 2014, Creative Time presented the first large-scale public project by Kara Walker, one of the most important artists of our era. Sited in the sprawling industrial relics of Brooklyn’s legendary Domino Sugar Factory, Walker’s physically and conceptually expansive installation—a massive, sugar-coated sphinx-like woman, responded to the building and its history.
As is her custom, the artist gave this work a title that is at once poetic and descriptive: “A Subtlety or 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 on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant”.
[The above text comes from Creative Time where there also can be found an excellent video about the work (http://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/)]
A Subtlety is a powerful work which raised important questions about race, power, ruins, monuments (indeed Egypt and the commonly received understanding of the Sphinx), as well as about the sugar industry, oppression, and aristocracy.
There are many articles in the popular and specialist press about A Subtlety:
https://hyperallergic.com/125592/what-does-kara-walkers-sugary-sphinx-tell-us/
https://longreads.com/2018/02/27/kara-walkers-subtlety/
https://southernspaces.org/2014/kara-walkers-blood-sugar-subtlety-or-marvelous-sugar-baby
Additional academic discussion of the work will be found in these articles:
Keyser, C. 2014. The sweet tooth of slavery: Django Unchained and Kara Walker's A Subtlety. Transition 115(1): 143-53.
Musser, A.J. 2016. Queering sugar: Kara Walker’s sugar sphinx and the intractability of black female sexuality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42(1): 153-74.
Preziuso, M. 2016. A Subtlety by Kara Walker: teaching vulnerable art. Journal of International Women's Studies 17(3): 136-48.
Reeder, L.K. 2015. Kara Walker: Subtlety as a big idea. Art Education 68(1): 51-58.
For more information about Kara Walker check out these publications and links:
Shaw, G.D. 2004. Seeing the Unspeakable: the Art of Kara Walker. Durham, NC.: Duke University Press.
Walker, K.E. 2007. Kara Walker: After the Deluge. New York: Rizzoli.
http://www.karawalkerstudio.com/
All images remain the copyrighted property of Kara Walker/Creative Time.
