The Max Mara Art Prize for Women, although only in its ninth edition, already has a reputation for playing a key role in the careers of women artists with unique practices. The award includes a residency in Italy, resulting in an exhibition at the Whitechapel in London. Announced last year, the recipient of the 2022-2024 Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Dominque White, works with sculpture and installation through methods of deep research, and adds her name to the impressive list of previous winners, including Laure Prouvost, Helen Cammock and Emma Talbot.
White’s Whitechapel exhibition, ‘Deadweight’, which opens 2 July 2024, is a result of her Italian residency, completed predominantly in Todi, near Rome, and Genoa, the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. The show takes its name from the measuring of the weight of ships’ contents, including people and cargo, as a single unit, exploring Afrofuturism, Afro-pessimism and hydrarchy (the practice of gaining power over land using water). White looks at the submarine world as an Afrofuturistic space for emancipation, a world of possibilities both dangerous and filled with the potential of the unexplored.
