The artist and MacArthur “genius grant” winner Kara Walker’s newest work is about the history of sugar. It is also made primarily of sugar (four tons of it, in 500 layers over a Styrofoam structure). And it’s housed in a former Domino Sugar factory.
Called “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby,” the extended title goes on to tell us the work is meant to be “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.” It is a 35-foot-tall, 75-foot-long sphinxlike figure with “the head of a woman who has very African, black features,” as the artist told an interviewer. “She sits somewhere in between the kind of mammy figure of old and something a little bit more recognizable—recognizably human. … [She has] very full lips; high cheekbones; eyes that have no eyes, [that] seem to be either looking out or closed; and a kerchief on her head. She’s positioned with her arms flat out across the ground and large breasts that are staring at you.” The rear features large, upturned buttocks (reminiscent of Saartjie Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus), and very large labia. The last was included because, as Walker said in a discussion in May at the New York Public Library, while Western art is filled with phallic imagery, there simply are not enough vaginas that have historically adorned the walls of galleries and museums.
What that means is that the “Marvelous Sugar Baby” is a piece of art that visually represents all of the key stereotypes of black women in which the dominant culture has trafficked for centuries: the large-boned, asexual, dark-skinned mammy; the highly sexual and sexualized Jezebel; and the loud, angry, socially unacceptable sapphire. In seeming response either to critics of the work or to a culture so consistently bent on representing black women thusly, the sculpture literally gives “the finger” to viewers with one of her giant, catlike, faux paws. Clearly the work is as monstrous and grotesque as the system of slavery that both supported the production of sugar and influenced how a large part of the world came to represent, if not literally to see, black women.
Conversations among black women on Facebook about Kara Walker’s sculpture are far different from the uniformly positive mainstream reviews.
Given all that, one of the interesting facets of mainstream reviews of the “Marvelous Sugar Baby” is how uniformly and uncritically it is praised—and how different those discussions are from the conversations among black women on Facebook.
There, depending on one’s “friends,” are a range of arguments and emotions that span outright adoration to mild discomfort up through and including rage. These discussions feature complex, intergenerational perspectives, with some writers describing their reaction to the artwork as akin to a religious experience, while others wonder if the artist loves, or even likes, black women.
That black women differ from one another, or that they are talking about art, stereotypes, or the relationship of gender to economic exploitation, or even that art might mean different things to various viewers, is not nearly as notable as is the fact that outside of Facebook, it is increasingly difficult to hear the voices of black women participating in such robust and nuanced conversations. Indeed, I’m starting to wonder if Facebook matters most because it is one of the few places where black women can publicly speak to and for themselves and with one another.
I noticed the differing levels of discussion about the “Marvelous Sugar Baby” and the politics of race on Facebook and in the mainstream media following my first visit to the installation. While Facebook had prepared me for the possibility of competing emotions, it hadn’t quite prepared me for how racial politics were so very much on display. On that day, as a white woman posed herself in front of the art piece’s vagina and smiled broadly for her friend holding the camera, a black woman nearby loudly asked a friend, “What is she doing? Why would you want a picture of yourself with that?” During the same visit, a group of black women stood near the sculpture’s breasts. One viewer gestured angrily. Another said, “I just feel taking pictures is disrespectful, and that thing is not love!”
When I asked one of the African-American docents about what racial differences she had observed in responses to the sculpture, she offered a nuanced perspective: Older black women, while sometimes perplexed by the imagery, were more likely to embrace the artist’s message; members of the younger generation were often either immediately offended by the statue’s face and breasts or by its enormous vagina. White people, the docent told me, generally seemed to like the work and to want to take a picture with it. Indeed, a recent article on Artnet, titled “Kara Walker’s Sugar Sphinx Spawns Offensive Instagram Photos,” shows examples of mostly white patrons simulating sex with the art piece.
Although most of the reviews of the sculpture are overwhelmingly positive, they rarely if ever take note of such overt racial dynamics and interactions at the site of the display. When reviews do mention race, mostly it is to describe the way Walker’s work offers an ennobling opportunity to confront the racialized history surrounding sugar production, about which many Americans are unaware. Such reviews do not mention, or attempt to make sense of, the behavior of visitors who engage that history in ways that are not just ignoble but also disrespectful. They do not probe the responses of visitors who are of different races—or generations.
Perhaps that is why Facebook has become such an important space for black women, academics, artists, students, writers, and others. There they can partake in hard, complicated, and sometimes painful conversations about race. In some of these discussions, many women agree with the majority of reviewers: The sculpture is a striking and emotionally resonant success. On other threads, often lasting days, there are intergenerational discussions about what the critic Ann DuCille has previously called “skin trade,” the practice of feeding the longstanding cultural appetite for degrading images of blacks for personal economic gain for the writer, artist, or cultural producer.
Women from the boomer generation are more likely to see the sugar sculpture as an unnerving but powerful intervention to stimulate dialogue about art, culture, history, and representation. However, some millennial women ask if Walker’s sphinx isn’t just a tired trope. They wonder whether we haven’t moved beyond stereotypes of black women, given television shows like Scandal, which stars Kerry Washington as an upper-middle-class professional. And, of course there is the first lady, Michelle Obama. Few spaces other than social media offer black women the opportunity for that type of engagement.
It is not only Kara Walker’s artwork that has spawned such conversations. There was the recent kerfuffle over Rihanna as she accepted an award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, wearing a dress that exposed her breasts. One British newspaper described the outfit as “a part Josephine Baker, part sphinx sheer dress, her modesty covered by a nude coloured thong. She accessorised with … a turban that referenced the style of glamorous Twenties flapper girls.” Whether she meant to or not, with her exposed buttocks and breasts and covered head, she embodied the stereotypes explored in Walker’s art.
Primarily using Twitter, some younger commentators applauded the pop singer’s embrace of her beauty, body, and sexuality. Those of an older generation more often questioned her judgment. Those conversations make it clear that there is more than one black perspective on the politics of race, gender, and sexuality.
According to a Pew Research Center study conducted last year, 76 percent of black adults who are online use Facebook. And women are more likely than men to do so. On Twitter, 22 percent of users are black women.
Why are social media so attractive to them? Surely the opportunity to share not only photos but also analysis and opinions must be part of the explanation. Male opinion columnists outnumber women four to one, and men are quoted as news sources more than three times as often. Fewer than 7 percent of journalists in the United States are women of color, and fewer than half that small group are black women. Social media represent one of the few spaces that allow black women to define, develop, and find support for their opinions and to differentiate their thinking based on region, generation, and perspective.
It may be time to tune in and listen. You might learn something.
Noliwe M. Rooks is an associate professor of Africana studies at Cornell University. Among her books is White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education (Beacon Press, 2006).
