Dewey Crumpler (b. 1949, Magnolia, Arkansas) is an artist, painter, and muralist renowned for his vibrant works. Blending various materials and digital imagery, his works transcend traditional boundaries, creating surreal experiences that merge video, mixed media, sculpture, and traditional painting techniques. In examining themes of race, capitalism, and the history of oppression, Crumpler has long been preoccupied with the ways in which objects can be sites of exploration for what it means to be Black, bringing light to the aesthetic freedom that leads to Black liberation.

Crumpler’s 'Container' series examines contemporary capitalism and the shipping industry within diasporic connections to the Transatlantic slave trade. Oceans and the ships that have been traversing them have played a central role in the transporting of human bodies and the dissemination of ideas and influences for millennia. Rendering nautical vessels, shipping pallets, and containers that fit between abstraction and representation. He employs the container ship as a visual symbol to probe the long history of the world’s oceans to facilitate change. Rectangular boxes filled with goods stacked in perfect symmetry are destined for exotic ports dotting the coastlines of every major city throughout the world. The uniformity of the shipping ports and their operations become structures of authority and monuments of economic and cultural power.