Alberta Whittle

History

Alberta Whittle is an artist, researcher and curator. She was a RAW Academie Fellow at RAW Material in Dakar in 2018 and is the Margaret Tait Award winner for 2018/9. She is a Committee Member at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow and a Board Member of SCAN (Scottish Creative Art Network). ​Her creative practice is motivated by the desire to work collectively towards radical self-love. Informed by diasporic conversations, Alberta considers radical self-love and collective care key methods in battling anti-blackness. Her practice involves choreographing interactive installations, using film, sculpture and performance as site-specific artworks in public and private spaces. Alberta has exhibited and performed in various solo and group shows, including at GoMA, Glasgow (2019), The City Arts Centre, Edinburgh (2019), The Showroom, London (2018), National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (2018), RAW Material, Dakar (2018), FADA Gallery, Johannesburg (2018), the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (2017), FRAMER FRAMED, Amsterdam (2015), Goethe On Main, Johannesburg (2015), at the Johannesburg Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015), and BOZAR, Brussels (2014), amongst others. The Contemporary Art Research Collection at Edinburgh College of Art recently purchased several of her works. Over 2019, Alberta will be showing her work at the 13th Havana Biennale, Cuba, Pig Rock Bothy at the National Galleries of Scotland, (Edinburgh), displaced at The Travelling Gallery (various locations Scotland), UNFIX festival at the CCA, (Glasgow), The Imagined New at the University of Johannesburg (Johannesburg), Stalking the Image: Margaret Tait and her Legacy at GoMA (Glasgow), How flexible can we make the mouth at the DCA (Dundee), Without Tides, an invitation at Edinburgh Printmakers (Edinburgh) and Business as Usual at The Reid Gallery (Glasgow). Alberta’s writing has been published in MAP magazine, Visual Culture in Britain, Visual Studies, Art South Africa and Critical Arts Academic Journal.

Movies

Lagareh - The Last Born
Lagareh - The Last Born
Director
‘Lagareh’ – which translates from the Mandinka language as ​‘The Last Born’ – is a work anchored around theories of abolition, rebellion, ancestral knowledge and love. Shot in Scotland, England, Barbados, Sierra Leone and Italy, the film melds a collection of scenes that give focus to the strength of contemporary Black womxn, whose individual acts of resistance are bound together through the artist’s conceptual storytelling. The artist situates Black love in proximity with historical sites of trauma, re-inscribed with rage, hope and exhaustion. Gestures, rituals and moments of intimacy are poignantly underpinned by a deep reflection on grief, loss and mourning, a resolute reminder of the trauma inflicted upon the Black body and of white privilege and power.
What is a Better Life
What is a Better Life
Director
In the words of Christina Sharpe, a "visually and sonically rich" work inspired by Dionne Brand's "A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging." Commissioned by Hayward Gallery Touring and The Box, Plymouth, for British Art Show 9.
What is a Better Life
What is a Better Life
Music
In the words of Christina Sharpe, a "visually and sonically rich" work inspired by Dionne Brand's "A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging." Commissioned by Hayward Gallery Touring and The Box, Plymouth, for British Art Show 9.
What is a Better Life
What is a Better Life
Cinematography
In the words of Christina Sharpe, a "visually and sonically rich" work inspired by Dionne Brand's "A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging." Commissioned by Hayward Gallery Touring and The Box, Plymouth, for British Art Show 9.
business as usual : hostile environment
business as usual : hostile environment
Cinematography
A working iteration of the project "business as usual : hostile environment". Originally co-commissioned with Glasgow Sculpture Studios as part of Event Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters, the project was conceived to explore Glasgow’s Forth and Clyde Canal as both a literal and poetic route through which to reflect on the role of waterways in the voluntary and involuntary movement of people. Reworking aspects of the new film at speed and in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, Whittle powerfully incorporates archival footage relating to the UK’s Windrush scandal as well as material highlighting the role of immigrants in the NHS as they tackle the virus, foregrounding how political and ecological climates intersect and shape one another.
business as usual : hostile environment
business as usual : hostile environment
Director
A working iteration of the project "business as usual : hostile environment". Originally co-commissioned with Glasgow Sculpture Studios as part of Event Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters, the project was conceived to explore Glasgow’s Forth and Clyde Canal as both a literal and poetic route through which to reflect on the role of waterways in the voluntary and involuntary movement of people. Reworking aspects of the new film at speed and in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, Whittle powerfully incorporates archival footage relating to the UK’s Windrush scandal as well as material highlighting the role of immigrants in the NHS as they tackle the virus, foregrounding how political and ecological climates intersect and shape one another.
between a whisper and a cry
between a whisper and a cry
Director
The 2018/19 Margaret Tait Award commission by Alberta Whittle. Whittle’s film seeks to challenge conditions of racialised abjection and find new methods for refusal. A chief linkage is the sonic cosmologies found in Kamau Brathwaite’s research on ‘tidalectics’, and Christina Sharpe’s work on The Weather. Sharpe positions The Weather as a lens to understand the inescapable conditions within the afterlife of slavery, while Brathwaite’s theories of ‘tidalectics’ expose the performativity of sound, revealing memories of transoceanic life.
Holding The Line
Holding The Line
Director
Edited during the BLM rebellions in June 2020, HOLDING THE LINE connects with Saidiya Hartman’s research on waywardness - dreaming and longing for a whole life nurtured in self-compassion, possibility and love, outside of the spectre of racialised violence and surveillance. Curious about how hope for survival, joy and release can manifest in the face of intersecting violences, HOLDING THE LINE suggests the following questions: Is the ability to live free a dream? What WILL freedom feel like?