Dominique White, winner of the ninth edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, presents Deadweight, a body of works made in 2024. After a premiere at Whitechapel Gallery in London (July 2-September 15, 2024), White has conceived a new exhibition design adapted to the Maramotti Collection's spaces.
A thought-provoking exploration of rebellion and transformation, Deadweight includes four large-scale sculptures which pursue the artist's interest in creating new worlds for "Blackness", as well as her fascination with the metaphoric potency and regenerative power of the sea.
The title Deadweight derives from a nautical term ("deadweight tonnage") that compresses everything on a ship into a single unit, one which determines the ship’s ability to float and function as intended. White deliberately inverts this concept, offering disruption as opposed to stability - a reckoning with the tipping point of the ship, to offer the possibility of emancipation through destruction.
The works combine force and fragility: undulating angular structures in which metals have been manipulated into shapes evocative of anchors, a ship's hull, mammal carcasses or skeletons. They are lost or abandoned material forms that, through White’s treatment, become symbols of defiance.
