Client: Creative Time

Overview

At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected: 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. From May 10 to July 6, 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, soon-to-be-demolished Domino Sugar Factory, Walker’s physically and conceptually expansive installation—a massive, sugar-coated sphinx-like woman—responded to the building and its history.

Goals

“The Domino Sugar Factory is doing a large part of the work. [I wanted] to make a piece that would complement it, echo it, and hopefully contain these assorted meanings about imperialism, about slavery, about the slave trade that traded sugar for bodies and bodies for sugar.” Artist Kara Walker

Process

The 15 processional figures were cast in sugar and molasses-coated resin. Walker produced dozens of studies in the months leading up to her installation. See the rest: http://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/inspiration/
Working full time for two months, a team of sculptors and candy specialists helped turn 330 styrofoam blocks and 40 tons of sugar into Walker's incredible installation.
Artist — Kara Walker
Presenting organization — Creative Time
Lead project support — National Endowment for the Arts and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Major support — http://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/project-support/
Production team — http://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/production-team/