Dame Rachel Whiteread (born 1963) is a prominent British sculptor and the first woman to be awarded the Turner Prize (1993). A key figure among the Young British Artists (YBAs) of the 1990s, Whiteread is recognized for a methodology that involves casting the "negative space" or voids within and around familiar objects. Originally trained in painting at Brighton Polytechnic and later in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, she utilizes industrial materials such as plaster, resin, rubber, and concrete to solidify the air inside structures and domestic items, effectively turning the invisible into tangible form.

Whiteread’s practice often centers on themes of memory, domesticity, and the body’s relationship to its surroundings. Her early career was marked by the monumental public commission House (1993), a life-sized concrete cast of the interior of a condemned Victorian terrace house in London’s East End. While the work sparked intense public debate and was ultimately demolished, it established her reputation for creating "ghostly" monuments that reflect socio-political shifts in urban environments. Other major public works include the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial (2000) in Vienna—a "nameless library" of cast book spines—and Water Tower (1998), a resin cast installed atop a New York City building.

Throughout her career, Whiteread has been the subject of major retrospectives at institutions such as Tate Britain, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Her work is characterized by a "minimalism with a heart," moving beyond the starkness of traditional geometric forms to evoke the histories of everyday objects like mattresses, hot water bottles, and chairs. For her extensive contributions to the arts, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2019. She continues to live and work in London, maintaining a practice that explores the boundaries between presence and absence.