Kara Walker

With fluent brushwork, Kara Walker depicts a brutal scene. Two slaves harvest sugarcane in the fore­ground, an overseer stands with a whip in the middle ground, and, in the background, a figure defecates while being branded. The crimson wash seems to suggest the blood shed for the sugar trade.

Walker made this watercolor in the wake of A Subtlety, her monumental 2014 installation in a former sugar refinery in Brooklyn, New York. A Subtlety examined the violent history of sugar pro­duction in the Caribbean and the enslaved people who fed the desire for sugar in all its forms.

–Jan Howard, Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

This watercolor addresses the complicated and brutal histories of slavery and the sugar trade. Whip is saturated with trauma and pain; sketched on a ground of crimson wash, a slave harvesting sugar cane casts an apprehensive backward glance.

Kara Walker made this watercolor in the wake of A Subtlety (2014), her monumental installation in a former sugar refinery in Brooklyn, New York. Throughout its duration, A Subtlety served as a site that examined the fraught history of sugar production and honored the Caribbean slaves who fed the desire for sugar in all its forms. These watercolors are similarly discomfiting, prompting the viewer to consider how the dark histories of human behavior continue to inform the present.