EDINBURGH.- New multi-media works by the celebrated Barbadian-Scottish artist, Alberta Whittle, will be revealed this spring in a free exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland. Alberta Whittle: create dangerously will open on April 1, 2023 and will run until January 7, 2024. Taking over the ground floor of Modern One, this will be the largest exploration of the artist’s works to date. The exhibition will offer a survey of Alberta’s expansive practice, featuring sculptures and installations, digital collages, drawings and watercolours, and new works made especially for the show.

Alberta Whittle: create dangerously will mark the return of two major works to Scotland, which gained critical acclaim at the 59th Venice Biennale, 2022. Alberta’s extraordinary tapestry, Entanglement is more than blood (2022) created in collaboration with Dovecot Studios, and her thought-provoking film, Lagareh – The Last Born (2022) co-commissioned and produced with the support of Forma – both commissioned by Scotland + Venice as part of her new body of work deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Alberta Whittle: create dangerously is an immersive exhibition which invites you to slow down and pause. At the heart of Alberta’s solo show is her generous spirit which promotes compassion and collective care as means of resisting racism and anti-Blackness.

In her works, Alberta addresses the brutality and harm caused by colonialism, the Transatlantic trade in enslaved people, and the ongoing climate crisis. Through richly symbolic artworks, she pulls apart the belief that ’racism and police brutality is [just] an English problem or an American problem’. Instead she underlines Scotland’s complicity in the structures of white supremacy. Often deeply personal, weaving stories of family and belonging, Alberta ultimately offers a message of hope, asking us to imagine a world outside of these damaging systems and ways of thinking.

This is the largest showing of Alberta’s works to date, with sculptures, digital collages, watercolours and new paintings, made especially for the show, taking over the ground floor of Modern One. Alongside never-before-seen artworks, the exhibition offers you the opportunity to see Alberta’s extraordinary tapestry, Entanglement is more than blood, and film installation, Lagareh – The Last Born – which the artist presented at the Venice Biennale in 2022, commissioned by Scotland+Venice.

Alberta Whittle: create dangerously is a unique opportunity to experience the ambition and breadth of the Barbadian-Scottish artist’s career to date, and to consider Alberta’s call for us to ‘invest in love’.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Alberta Whittle: create dangerously
April 1st, 2023 - January 7th, 2024