{"id":2085,"date":"2014-06-01T23:16:13","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T23:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/?p=2085"},"modified":"2015-03-16T19:35:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T19:35:17","slug":"the-marvelous-sugar-baby-a-massive-sugar-sphinx-by-kara-walker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/?p=2085","title":{"rendered":"The Marvelous Sugar Baby : a thought provoking sugar sphinx by Kara Walker"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just saw Kara Walker’s stunning sugar sphinx installation in Brooklyn called \u201cA Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby , an\u00a0Homage 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.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is at the Domino Sugar Factory . This sugar refinening factory was built in 1882 and processed half the sugar that is consumed in the USA. The massive storage shed is where the dark brown raw sugar was kept before being bleached and whitened. The walls of the shed are dark brown and stained by the dripping molasses <\/span><\/p>\n

The Marvelous Sugar Baby is 35 feet high ( 10.7 meters) \u00a0and 75 feet long ( 22.9 meters ) , and it took four tons of sugar to create. \u00a0Afterward, the refining plant will be\u00a0torn down and tall , expensive condo buildings will be built. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The installation is an ode to the cane fields\u2019 black labor that Karen Walker has chosen to make grotesquely white. She has titled it \u201cA Subtlety\u201d \u2014 after the intricate sugar sculptures that were centerpieces for medieval feasts \u2014 even though it is absurdly unsubtle.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Washington Post says :<\/span><\/p>\n

She\u2019s doing what she does best: drawing you in with something sweet, something almost charming, before you realize you\u2019ve admired something disturbing. In this case, that\u2019s the horror-riddled Caribbean slave trade that helped fuel the industrial gains of the 18th and 19th centuries; a slave trade built to profit from an insatiable Western market for refined sugar treats and rum.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, it was blood sugar,\u201d Walker says. \u201cLike we talk about blood diamonds today, there were pamphlets saying this sugar has blood on its hands.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

She explains that to make the sugar, the cane had to be fed into large mills by hand. It was a dangerous process: Slaves lost hands, arms, limbs and lives.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been kind of back and forth with my reverence for sugar,\u201d Walker says. \u201cLike, how we\u2019re all kind of invested in its production without really realizing just what goes into it; how much chemistry goes into extracting whiteness from the sugar cane.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a descriptive article of the politics of the sculpture in the New Yorker article \u00a0here<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The installation closes July 6.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I just saw Kara Walker’s stunning sugar sphinx installation in Brooklyn called \u201cA Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby , an\u00a0Homage 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,4,2],"tags":[748,747,746,749],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-inspiration","category-travel","tag-kara-walker-sculpture","tag-kara-walker-sugar-sphinx","tag-the-marvelous-sugar-baby","tag-the-sugar-factory-brooklyn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Screen-Shot-2014-06-01-at-6.10.54-PM.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BVEi-xD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2116,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions\/2116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fashionsphinx.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}