Who Won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women 2023?

Elements of the winner's work will be submerged in the Tyrrhenian Sea off Italy's West Coast.

The youngest ever winner of the biennial Max Mara Art Prize was presented with the award at a ceremony in London's Whitechapel Gallery this evening.

Essex and Marseille-based 'Afro-futurist' sculptor Dominique White took the prize ahead of four other shortlisted artists, all of them women of colour.

The other shortlisted artists were: Jarman Award nominee Onyeka Igwe; Rebecca Bellantoni who recently performed at the Tate Britain; dancer and filmmaker Zinzi Minnot; and Bhajan Hunjan, whose colourful semi-abstract patterns can be found in public across English cities.

Awarded by fashion brand Max Mara, Whitechapel Gallery, and Collezione Maramotti, the prize is open to emerging women artists in the U.K. who have had no major solo institutional shows. Winners are supported in their practice through a six-month residency in Italy.

'I'm thrilled to have been the recipient of an award that not only enables the development of seemingly unattainable skills and ambitious areas of research, but also (quite literally) supports the emergence of a new body of works,' White said in a statement.

White's ship-wreck-like sculptures and installations draw upon maritime history and metaphor to explore the nature of Blackness, and the dismantling of 'Hydrachy' (the ability for individuals to gain power over land through sea).

Her assemblages, great and small, consist of discarded nautical objects and materials such as sails, masts, flags, ropes, chains, burned mahogany, Kaolin clay, and untreated iron.

Whitechapel director Gilane Tawadros, who co-chaired the prize jury that selected White, described the artist's work as 'timely and relevant', showing 'maturity, rigour and consistency of creative approach that is entirely in keeping with the aims of the prize.'

During her residency, White will meet with historians and journalists, visit key sites, nautical museums, and archives in Southern Italy, forage for materials in ship graveyards, and learn from metal workers to realise a new body of work called 'Deadweight'.

'Deadweight' explores the maritime terminology of 'deadweight tonnage' (how much a ship can carry including cargo, fuel, fresh water, ballast water, provisions, passengers, and crew) in the context of the historic and contemporary slave trade in the Mediterranean. As a part of this process White will submerge elements of her final work in the Tyrrhenian Sea on Italy's Western Coastline.

'At a time when the need for refuge and safe space is so acute and the passage of individuals and communities by sea poses such risks to lives and exposes so much injustice, the interrogation and exploration of both the historical and contemporary systems that control movement and identity seems especially urgent,' Tawadros commented.

White's final work from the residency will be the basis of a solo show at Whitechapel Gallery in Summer 2024, followed by an Autumn show at Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Works from the exhibition will be added to the Maramotti collection.

Previous winners of the Max Mara Art Prize include Turner Prize winners Laure Prouvost, and Helen Cammock, as well as Andrea Büttner, Emma Hart and Emma Talbot. —[O]