Endless Sugar
Cornelia Parker British
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.
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