Juxtapoz Magazine - Shaquelle Whyte: "Nine nights; Strange fruit" @ White Cube, Hong Kong

"Nine nights; Strange fruit brings together a new body of paintings by London-based artist Shaqúelle Whyte that trace the emotional and temporal reverberations of familial grief. Rather than unfolding as a linear account, the exhibition forms a constellation of moments that draw upon the Jamaican funerary tradition of Nine Nights and the historic resonance of the protest song 'Strange Fruit'. Across these works, figures fracture, double and ripple, compressing multiple temporalities within a single visual field."

"'Nine nights' refers to the Jamaican tradition in which celebration and mourning unite across an extended wake. Carried from West African origins into Jamaican and wider diasporic practice, the tradition marks the departure of the spirit into another realm - heaven within Christian eschatology, or, in a colonial or Rastafarian sense, a symbolic return to the homeland. Whyte approaches this tradition non-linearly, treating it as a departure point from which family histories and emotional inheritances splinter into new timelines."

"'Strange fruit' is also invoked in the exhibition's title, borrowed from the 1939 poem popularised in song by Billie Holiday and later Nina Simone, protesting racial violence enacted against African Americans. For Whyte, the phrase functions less as an overt political assertion than as a gesture of recognition - 'I know you, I see you' - that acknowledges the taking of Black life and poignantly alludes to the premature death of the artist's grandfather due to corporate negligence, the year before he was born."

Shaqúelle Whyte's paintings trace emotional and temporal reverberations of familial grief through non-linear, layered compositions. The works engage the Jamaican funerary tradition of Nine Nights alongside the historical resonance of 'Strange Fruit', compressing multiple temporalities and fracturing figures to reflect mourning and diasporic identity. Whyte uses an intuitive process—'the canvas starts telling you what to do'—to produce expansive visual fields where loss, love and memory converge. The Nine Nights motif signifies celebration and mourning, diasporic origins, and symbolic return, while 'Strange Fruit' operates as a gesture of recognition of Black life taken and a personal allusion to familial loss.

Read at Juxtapoz