Dominique White’s ‘Deadweight’: an underwater expression of Afrofuturism

Max Mara Art Prize for Women winner Dominique White is currently presenting a new solo exhibition, Deadweight, at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the UK. Running from July 2 - September 15, 2024, the exhibition plays on three distinct themes consistent with White’s research and practice – 'hydrarchy' (the hierarchy of power or a legal system commonly associated with pirates at sea), Afro-pessimism and Afrofuturism.

The title for the show refers to a phrase utilised in maritime navigation that encompasses the entirety of a ship into a single component, influencing the vessel’s ability to remain afloat. However, White flips this perspective, emphasising the juxtaposition between chaos and steadiness, in what the gallery’s press note describes as “a reckoning with the tipping point of the ship to offer the possibility of emancipation through abolition”. Through her sculpture art, she places viewers in an underwater utopia, aiming to symbolise the fluidity and sense of rebellion that accompanies her conceptual framing of the ‘Stateless’ – as the exhibition note states, “a [Black] future that hasn’t yet happened, but must.”

White is fascinated with the “metaphoric potency and regenerative power of the sea”. Her creative process imagines an Afro future, emphasised through an acute awareness of history. For White, iron in the Atlantic Sea serves as one of the many remains of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. By incorporating iron into her conceptual art, the artist references the history of the slave trade, the cognizance of which lends gravity to her ideals of a more liberated future through her conceptualised emergence of The Stateless.

Deadweight presents four sculptural works formed from metal and organic material and utilises a nautically inspired variety of materials that the sculpture artist transforms into powerful symbolism. White brings an element of natural decay by investigating the effect of seawater on her material.

Aside from incorporating elements from the ocean – such as driftwood, sisal and raffia – to aid the world-building experience, she also includes a strong olfactory element that solidifies the concept of Deadweight, by introducing the scent of seawater. Further, she plays with the oxidation of metallic elements in the sculpture by submerging each in seawater, to create a compelling visual marker of the passage of time - “both a physical and poetic gesture to explore the transformative effect of water on material objects.”

Dominique White’s ‘Deadweight’ is on view from July 2 - September 15, 2024, at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the UK.

(Text by Diya Rudra, intern at STIR)