The Domino Sugar refinery, an iconic part of the East River view from Manhattan and closed since 2004, is undergoing slow demolition. It’s a contentious subject. The building was erected in 1882, and while not everyone wants to preserve it, many locals in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn have expressed anger and frustration at the plan to erect luxury apartments on the land, further gentrifying the area. It’s amidst this conflict artist Kara Walker‘s exhibit, “A Subtlety,” finds an appropriate home.

The show is billed as 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.” Walker’s monumental sphinx centerpiece is 75.5-feet long, 35.5 feet high, and 26 feet wide, with a “mammy” kerchief and caricaturized, animalistic stance. There are also amber-colored “Sugar Babies,” realistic, life-size children that drip and melt with a molasses-like substance. The work certainly feels like Walker, though the materials are unexpected, as she’s most well-known for her disturbingly beautiful silhouette depictions of the plantation South.

The slave labor used on sugar plantations in the Caribbean and Americas is the obvious reference, but it’s also worth noting that the purpose of a refinery is to remove the molasses from raw sugar, thereby turning brown sugar into a sparkling crystalline white. “A Subtlety,” which is free, will be open to the public Saturday, May 10th. It will be open Fridays 4 to 8 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 12 to 6 p.m. until its close on June 6.
 

During construction, before being coated in sugar
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Via Gothamist