2018
Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Formerly GRACE)
Bitter Sweeter explores sugar’s global significance, including its often problematic production and consumption, through a series of light box tableaux, corresponding “artifacts”, and text.
The tableaux illustrate sugar’s spread westward from India, to the Mediterranean, to England and its colonies, to the USA. Silhouettes of laborers are pictured with consumers, but often upside-down, suggesting fraught dynamics. Patterns inspired by the cultures of the laborers adorn each box, and appear as fine clothing prints and doilies. Dimming lights allow the sugar silhouettes to appear whiter, once a sign of purity, while suggesting the passage of time.
An artifact corresponds to each lightbox, showing how the forms and uses of sugar have evolved (or perhaps devolved) over the centuries, becoming whiter, cheaper, and more abundant.
Photo credit: Charlotte Geary; courtesy of Greater Reston Arts Center .