Dominique White: Deadweight
By (Author) Dominique White
Text by Olamiju Fajemisin
Text by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Whitechapel Gallery
Whitechapel Gallery
16th March 2025
16th January 2025
United Kingdom
Paperback
112
Width 210mm, Height 297mm
250g
Deadweight is a new body of work by Dominique White, winner of the 9th Max Mara Art Prize for Women, during a six-month residency in Italy.
Published to accompany the work's debut at Whitechapel Gallery, this exhibition catalogue includes installation photography, texts by Olamiju Fajemisin and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an interview between the artist and Bina von Stauffenberg, and poems by June Jordan.
An exploration of rebellion and transformation, Deadweight features four large-scale sculptural works that reflect the artist's deep connection with the sea and her enduring fascination with shipwrecks. Combining force and fragility, the sharp, angular structures evoke material forms - anchors, a ship's hull, the carcass of an unknown mammal - which also act as symbols of defiance. The title Deadweight, originally a nautical term for a ship's carrying capacity, is inverted by White to signify disruption instead of stability. It symbolises a breaking point, suggesting that freedom might be achieved through abolition.
Dominique White (b.1993, UK) is the 9th winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. White's recent solo exhibitions include: Destruction of Order, VEDA (Florence, Italy, 2024); Dominique White and Alberta Whittle: Sargasso Sea, ICA Philadelphia (Philadelphia, USA 2024); When Disaster Strikes, Kunsthalle Mnster (Mnster, Germany 2023-4), May You Break Free and Outlive Your Enemy, La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain, 2023) and Statements, Art Basel (Basel, Switzerland, 2022). White was awarded the Foundwork Artist Prize of 2022 (US), has received awards from Artangel (UK), the Henry Moore Foundation (UK) in 2020 and the Roger Pailhas Prize (Art-O-Rama, FR) in conjunction with her solo presentation with VEDA in 2019. White was in residency at Sagrada Mercancia (Chile), Triangle France - Asteride (France) and La Becque (Switzerland) in 2020 and 2021.