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Dominique White: When Disaster Strikes

Exhibition at Kunsthalle Münster
£6,000 awarded

Dominique White’s works function as abstract commemorative sculptures, appearing as though they have been literally dredged from the sea.

Abstract sculpture in a white gallery space. It is made from twisted, rusted metal and evokes the appearance of a structure or vehicle that has burned down.

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Two abstract sculpture in a white gallery space. One is conical in shape and sits on the floor, made of rusted metal hooks and fabric that looks to have been burned. The other is suspended from the ceiling, a mesh of twisted, rusted metal with matted white fabric hanging off it.
Close up view of tangled, matted fibres and fabric, painted or dyed black, attached to a rusted metal frame.
Abstract sculpture in a white gallery space. It is made from rusted metal harpoons and rope, arranged in a vaguely conical shape.
Close up view of a slightly rusted metal harpoon tip.
Abstract sculpture in a white gallery space. It is made from rusted metal harpoons and rope, arranged in a vaguely conical shape.
Close up view of tangled, matted fibres and fabric, stained black, attached to a rusted metal frame. It is covered in charcoal powder, making it look like it has been burned.
Close up view of tangled, matted fibres and fabric, painted white.
Close up view of part of a sculpture, showing the tips of several rusted iron hooks.
Close up view of part of a sculpture, showing the tips of several rusted iron hooks linked together to make a mesh, with strands of white fabric hanging off it.
Abstract sculpture in a white gallery space. It is made from twisted, rusted metal and evokes the appearance of a structure or vehicle that has burned down.

About the exhibition

Dominique White deals with blackness in its conceptual and material implications. Her works are a play on memory and metamorphosis, through which the vanished finds its way into the rooms of Kunsthalle Münster.

White’s sculptures represent the materialisation of black life beyond its subjective boundaries, as lighthouses or vessels of an ignored civilisation. She draws on various legends that have their origins in the depths of the ocean, creating monuments to an underwater nation made up of submerged non-human beings.

In the nowhere below sea level, inhabited by the ghostly ruins of Black Lives, there exists a living vocabulary that gives birth to fantastic creatures, myths and fictions that emerge from the unthinkable union of the unborn child of the enslaved and the shipwrecked.

Close up view of tangled, matted fibres and fabric, stained black, attached to a rusted metal frame. It is covered in charcoal powder, making it look like it has been burned.
Dominique White, 'The domination of Nothing' (detail) 2023, wrought iron (rusted), sisal, destroyed sail, mahogany (burnt), high volatile charcoal. Courtesy the artist and Veda. Photo: Volker Renner.
Close up view of part of a sculpture, showing the tips of several rusted iron hooks linked together to make a mesh, with strands of white fabric hanging off it.
Dominique White, 'The dethroning of the Human' (detail) 2023, wrought iron, kaolin, destroyed sail, rope, high volatile charcoal. Courtesy the artist and Veda. Photo: Volker Renner.

White’s seemingly fragile works are imbued with an immediately palpable brutality. In her visual vocabulary, White combines the imitation of a shipwreck with destroyed sails, dilapidated hand-woven nets, ropes and tattered buoys wrapped in a ghostly kaolin shroud. Harpoons, which appear decomposed by salt water, are also recurring elements in her work.

The vulnerability of Dominique White’s sculptures is uncompromising. In the exclusively new works that she produced for this exhibition, the sculptural bodies straddle states of preservation, decay and destruction; ghosts among ghosts. The sculptures embody the rejection of a future based on the violence of colonialism.

The works in When Disaster Strikes sometimes made visitors recoil, yet touched them deeply despite their abstraction. The exhibition communicated a very complex history that still characterises our present, offering a sensory and material approach to a topic that often only happens in a very theoretical way.

Dominique White: When Disaster Strikes was on display at Kunsthalle Münster from 9 December 2023 until 10 March 2024. Find out more at kunsthallemuenster.de.

About the artist

Dominique White (b. 1993, UK) is a graduate of Goldsmiths University of London and Central Saint Martins. Her recent exhibitions include May you break free and outlive your enemy, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2023); Statements, Art Basel, Basel (2022); Love, Bold Tendencies, London (2022); Cinders of the Wreck, Triangle-Astérides, Marseille (2022); Techno Worlds, produced by Goethe-Institut, Art Quarter Budapest (2021); Possédées, MO.CO, Montpellier (2020-21); Boundary + Gesture, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2019).

White is the winner of the 9th edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, (2022–24), and was chosen by CURA magazine as one of the most significant artists of the current generation. She was awarded the Roger Pailhas Prize in 2019 in conjunction with her solo exhibition at VEDA, Florence (2019) and received awards from Artangel and the Henry Moore Foundation in 2020. In 2020 and 2021, White was a guest artist at Sagrada Mercancía (Santiago, Chile), Triangle-Astérides (Marseille, France), and La Becque (La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland). White works nomadically.