“A Subtlety or The Marvelous Sugar Baby” is a public artwork made by Kara Walker and cosponsored by the developer that is converting the site of Williamsburg’s Domino Sugar Factory into condos. While the Subtlety refers to the sugar sculptures that once decorated the tables of the happy few as displays of their wealth, this piece presides over the dark interior of a defunct factory as a meditation on the sweet substance’s role in the slave trade of the 19th century.

Set beneath a huge skylight, it is a grand sight: the body of a monumental female sphinx covered in sugar, rising 30 feet high. Attended by a gathering of life-sized boys cast in molasses, she’s surmounted by the kerchiefed head of a stereotypical mammy. The back tails off into a gigantic booty, presenting her vagina in a provocative pose that towers above visitors.