In its critical reception, A Subtlety appears to be one of Walker’s least controversial works. I’m sure it outrages Walker’s longtime critics, including Betye Saar, but nearly everything I’ve read about the installation understands its anti-racist claims to be fairly straightforward, and few claim that it, as Howardena Pindell has said, “caters to white fantasies of black bestiality.”[3] Instead of blaming Walker for irresponsibly reanimating minstrel-like stereotypes, writers overwhelmingly condemn audience members for having the wrong response to the work.
A notable exception is Nicholas Powers, who places the responsibility for audiences’ racist reactions to the work at the feet of Walker and Creative Time. He distinguishes between his own viewing experience, grounded in a collective “historical vision” that makes it impossible for black viewers not to see the centuries of suffering carried in the piece, and that of many white visitors to the exhibit, who, protected by the ignorance that is one of many privileges bestowed by white supremacy, could do things like photograph their children “smiling next to a slave boy.”[4] Powers argues that Walker should have curated the piece in a way that would clearly indicate the history it memorializes, one characterized by slavery, rape, and violence, in order to control audience reactions and prevent callous misreadings.
Yet as Saidiya Hartman has argued, spectacles of violence against black people have always provoked a range of responses. Even the most gruesome depictions of slavery, designed to convince audiences of its horror, risk making dehumanizing violence more familiar and acceptable.[5] As Elizabeth Alexander puts it, “Black bodies in pain for public consumption have been an American national spectacle for centuries.”[6] Given our collective history of racial spectacle, I can’t imagine what Walker or Creative Time could do to enforce the correct emotional response to the work, and I’m cynical enough to suspect that the more reverential gaze Walker’s work receives in museums is a product of the aesthetic disposition, rather than an ethical engagement with the suffering she depicts.