The centerpiece of the exhibit, monumental, overwhelmingly feminine, made of sugar yet she don’t feel so sweet…
If you do one thing this weekend, you should go see Kara Walker’s breathtaking installation at the Domino Sugar Factory, which is just north of the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. Provided you are in New York City, of course. You’ve actually got through July 6… all the info you need is here.
The show, titled “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,” is a sickeningly sweet portal into the brutal world of the Caribbean slave trade, forcing us to both admire the incredible majesty of the people depicted as well as contemplate the disturbing reality of the conditions under which they labored and our own relationship to that work.
Which is complicated. And a mouthful. But it is what Kara Walker’s work is all about. Because the world is a complicated beautiful excessive mouthful, to say the least. It’s about race, and work, and family, and money and… well… just about everything.
And while we are in the space, we also confront the fact that this whole place, literally dripping with history, is about to be demolished and turned into a huge luxury condo building with all that entails.
I saw the show with my family and took loads of photographs… some of which are in the grid below. This is a new trick for me, but they say that if you click on the images, it turns into a slide show of sorts and you can scroll through them all at their full size. Seems like a nicer way than to have to scroll down forever, but you guys will let me know, right?
Enjoy the photos, the show (if you get there) and your Memorial Day weekend!
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