Austin Martin White‘s artistic practice explores images that shape our historical memory, drawing on archival research that addresses issues of identity, race, and postcolonialism. Working in a variety of media including rubber, vinyl and screen mesh, the artist has developed a unique approach that interweaves paintings and works on paper with printmaking techniques.
By choosing rubber as the core material of his paintings, he intertwines his themes with the historical conditions of the material itself. An export product of the colonies, it was a driver of the European industrialization and strengthened the economic power position of the Global North. This play of references permeating throughout White’s artistic practice operates like active traces that continuously recur in the past and influence the present.
The artist explores and reworks images that shape our historical memory, drawing on archival research of the 17th and 18th century image production through mediums such as prints, tapestries, and paintings. Ethnographic material formulated the Western construction of the Other in order to subjugate People of Color and legitimize colonialism.
Austin Martin White received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cooper Union in 2011 and holds a Master of Fine Arts in painting from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College since 2019. The artist had his first solo show at Capitain Petzel in 2022, followed by a solo exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York in 2023. He has also exhibited at Derek Eller Gallery, New York in 2023 and 2021 along with artist Kathia St. Hilaire, as well as at T293, Rome and at Y2K, New York. In 2024 Austin Martin White will participate in a group show at The Jewish Museum, New York.