kara walker: out of the light, into the shadows
Selected Works from Kara Walker
Fons Americanus
Image courtesy of Kara Walker Studio
Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions
Image courtesy of Kara Walker Studio
Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)
Image courtesy of SIKKEMA JENKINS & CO.
Kara Walker is one of the most versatile and innovative artists of our time. But don't take it from me, take it from the MacArthur Foundation, or the countless other awards she's won for her genius. She's made sculptures out of sugar, cutouts from black cardboard, puppet shows, films, projections, and more. Her work is unafraid to deal with explicit, gory, and heavy themes-- Walker is not one to shy away from an uncomfortable conversation. She deals extensively with the silhouetted stereotype, with reductions and cut-outs with dark and violent imagery. The irony of her recall of base 19th-century stereotypes complements the fact that much of her work is truly unsettling and disturbing to look at. It forces the viewer to confront the reality of slavery and the way it echoes in every part of the black experience, even today.
A Subtlety: Or… the Marvelous Sugar Baby (2017)
Commissioned by Creative Time, this giant Sphinx made out of sugar was a groundbreakingly ambitious project that can only really be summed up with a video rather than just an image and words. Displayed at the Domino Sugar Factory right before its demolition, the sugar sphinx is a response to the dark history of the sugar industry and its ties to slave labor and the exploitation of enslaved people. It was certainly interesting that Domino Foods would fund such a huge project that essentially criticizes their history and labor exploitation practices.
This sculpture immediately caught my eye as I was looking through Kara Walker's website, for obvious reasons. The size, along with the impressive force that the sculpture commands make it impossible to simply skip past. Though the work is titled "A Subtlety" (a type of sugar sculpture), there is nothing subtle about the piece, from the nudity to the scale and weight. All of Walker's pieces have a certain force to them, the domineering sense that it is the uncensored, expressive, explicit truth.
More than anything, I wish that I could have seen the exhibition in person. The location makes the piece especially profound and relevant, given the history of the location. Viewers testify that there was a potent stink in the air-- the smell of stale rotting sugar and dust. With Walker, anything can be turned into a museum- even an old sugar refinery. Forget pushing the boundaries, Kara Walker is redefining the concept of a museum entirely. And it's clear that something in her formula is working; the exhibition was a smashing success with more than 130,000 visitors.
Side view of A Subtlety, or. . . the Marvelous Sugar Baby. Image courtesy of The New York Times.
so what, and why?
Kara Walker's creative process for the project. Screen captures of a YouTube video, courtesy of Art21.
The tie between sugar and money was immediately obvious, especially considering how profitable the sugar trade was for the people who benefited from the exploitation of slave labor. Even today, the concept of the "sugar baby" is informed in part by the massive influence of sugar in our diet, lifestyle, and culture. What was less obvious to me was why Walker chose to make a sphinx, a seemingly unrelated ethos. In the video, she mentions how she was pondering "ruins" when she got the idea. I think there's multiple interpretations-- the mythologizing of black women's bodies, the mystery behind the sphinx's riddle, the cognitive dissonance caused by the contrast of the modern woman with a symbol of ruins.
But perhaps debating why the sphinx is a sphinx is less important than the presence and involuntary shock and awe that the sculpture evokes. The colossal size of the project, in a way, gives the sphinx a certain level of power over the viewer. On the one hand, some critics argue that the woman is a stereotypical "mammy," in a demeaning pose exposing her genitalia and breasts and the sugar equates her to a material for easy consumption. However, the size of the monument (which forces the viewer to look up), along with the resolute and enigmatic look on her face, makes it difficult to deny her power.
I could go on all day, but one thing is for sure: the sculpture is like nothing I have ever seen before. The sculpture made waves in the art world and among the public, something about the message of confronting our past and realizing how our materialism and overconsumption are fed by labor exploitation striking a chord in the general consciousness. The sphinx's entire body is exposed, in your face, powerful; it reveals painful histories and puts uncomfortable naked truths on display. The long history of sugar in this place starts and ends with this black woman's body.