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Endless Sugar

2011
Not on view
Parker’s sculptures often transform everyday objects in simple yet profound ways to critically reexamine their significance. Endless Sugar (readable as a feminist play on Endless Column, a series of iconic vertical sculptures created by Constantin Brancusi) is composed of thirty antique British sugar bowls that have been flattened by a 250-ton press. While the silver plating suggests pretensions to grandeur, there is a striking contrast between the evident violence of the work’s making and the delicacy of its suspended presentation. This paradox parallels the exploitative but lucrative colonial sugar trade that at once brutalized the enslaved peoples and colonized laborers while also supporting the British upper classes and the ritual gentility of their tea services.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Endless Sugar
  • Artist: Cornelia Parker (British, born Cheshire, 1956)
  • Date: 2011
  • Medium: Silver-plate and tinned copper wire
  • Dimensions: 5 in. above floor and approx. 10 ¼ in. deep x 162 ½ in. long when installed
  • Classification: Sculpture
  • Credit Line: Hortense and William A. Mohr Sculpture Purchase Fund, 2013
  • Object Number: 2013.991a–dd
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Cornelia Parker
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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