This Fresh Talk episode features A Subtlety, American artist Kara Walker’s first ever public art installation. Creative Time, an organization that produces public art projects internationally, invited the artist to respond to the history of the abandoned Domino sugar refinery in Brooklyn. A Subtlety, also known as The Marvelous Sugar Baby, references the intricate sugar sculptures once made for medieval feasts. The work pays homage to the unpaid and overworked laborers in the cane fields and refineries. We spoke to Creative Time Director Anne Pasternak and Kenyan poet Shailja Patel about this transformative project.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie

We recorded this episode on Randall’s Island, in front of a small tented performance space on the great green lawn outside the North entrance of Frieze New York. We’ve come to meet Israeli artist Naama Tsabar and Tom Tom magazine publisher Mindy Abovitz to learn about their collaboration. Theirs is literally an outsider project: Without is a free 4-day outdoor music festival featuring 17 bands. You’re about to hear how the artist and the publisher brought music to meet an art fair.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Tigue, Felt Band, Honey Ear Trio, Doble Pletina, Laila, Balancer, Tigue

To record this episode, we headed to Frieze New York 's tented art fair on Randall's Island. We were looking for Japanese artist Koki Tanaka to learn more about his interest in the island’s invisible communities. An array of picnic tables from a nearby park defined the space where Koki told a different Randall’s Island story each day, introducing communities and histories that lay outside the art fair’s reality.