User:MainlyTwelve/A Subtlety

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 June of 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 oppression, labor, and the ephemeral.

Conception
Ann Pasternak, the president of Creative Time, reached out to Walentas, both a Two Trees employee and a board member of Creative Time about a show on the site. Creative Time approached Walker roughly a year before the exhibition. She was attracted to the project in part because of the plant's history and the evidence of the work done there, such as molasses still covering the facility's walls. Creative Time selected Kara both because "[they] had been trying to get her to sign on to a public artwork for many years" and due to "the obvious historic connections between her work and the site".

Creative Time and Walker kept details about the project secret from the press. Production required several months of work and a team of more than 30 to construct.

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Exhibition
A Subtlety was open to the public from May 10th to August 6th of 2014 on weekends. Entrance to the exhibit required signing a waiver due to the asbestos and lead found in the structure, which was inhaled by those attending. Editorials noted the overwhelmingly white makeup of the audience. Jamilah King, writing for Color Lines said "...it's reassuring that so many white people have a vested -- or at least passing -- interest in consuming art that deals with race. At the same time I found it unsettling to view art by a black artist about racism in an audience that's mostly white."

Attendees were encouraged to post photographs to social media platform Instagram using the hashtag #karawalkerdomino. Many noted insensitive posts by audience members, including "jokes about the sphinx’s vagina or gag pictures where the subject pretends to pinch [the sphinx's] ass".

Materials
The sphinx was constructed from 330 polystyrene blocks donated by the Insulation Corporation of America. Its "skin” was made of 162,000 pounds (approximately 80 tons) of sugar donated by Domino Foods and applied by hand to the underlying structure. The polystyrene was recycled after the exhibit was closed, though the sugar was not.

Themes
Oppression, time (ephemerality)

Accolades
The piece won first prize International Association of Art Critics.