Play–White
☼
Artist: Bianca Baldi
Designer: Wolfgang Hückel & Katharina Tauer with K Verlag
Publisher: K Verlag
Size: 140 x 210 x 13 mm
Pages: 152pp
Binding: Paperback, thread-sewn, debossing and image embossing, iridescent dust jacket
Printed in: Lithuania
Year: 2021
The racist term "play-white" comes from the apartheid era, when it connoted a black or "mixed race" person who lived as a white person: “So and so is a play-white.” South African artist Bianca Baldi draws from studies of biomimicry and her own family history, as well as literary precedents — such as Nella Larsen’s novel Passing (1929) — to reflect on racial passing and the instability of racial identities.
Play-White alternates between layers of visualization and moments of discretion in order to explore questions of presence and evasion beyond their representation in black and white.