Kara Walker's Sugar Sphinx, officially titled A Subtlety, or The Marvellous 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, but getting to Brooklyn was a bit difficult.... I was even prepared to brave the one-hour long queues, but there you go, you can't see everything.
Sculpted from white sugar this monumental work,
in the historic Domino Sugar Refinery, has the body of a feline and the bust of a stylised, racist stereotype of a black woman. The work aims to explore the ways that the Transatlantic slave and sugar trades overlapped and their shared, enduring legacies. A commentary and a cultural critique of slavery and of perceptions of black women throughout history, the work features exaggerated features including breasts, a bottom and vagina.
Unfortunately, the work has spawned some tasteless Instagram photos from people clearly missing the point. As Walker said in an interview, 'nudity is a thing apparently, that people have a problem with; not slavery, or racism, but female bodies or bottoms'.
The exhibition ended on June 6th.
Source:
Artnet
No comments:
Post a Comment