Kunsthalle Basel

In her practice, Dominique White (b. 1993) interweaves maritime mythologies of the Black diaspora with the undoing of hydrarchy through the object that unifies both Blackness and the nation-state—the ship. At the core of the works made for this exhibition is the term “shipwreck(ed).” Rather than solely a marker of ruin, White understands this state as a radical reorientation of Black existence and futurity—a site between destruction and creation, trauma and hope, loss and self-empowerment. In this suspension, new forms of thought and being can emerge beyond the norms of a world shaped by colonialism.