Love and anger are at the heart of create dangerously, this major institutional exhibition by Alberta Whittle, the Barbadian born artist whose irresistible rise across a series of shows saw her representing Scotland at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Both works made for Venice are at the centre of create dangerously, which draws its title from Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat’s 2010 collection of essays concerning immigrant artists at work.
Whittle’s take on things sees her embark on a very personal journey, not just through the eleven rooms housing her work on the ground floor of Modern One, but across continents and centuries of black experience and the forces that continue to colonise and enslave. This global expanse becomes a kind of ceremonial address to the ancestors who are both the fire and guiding hand behind Whittle’s all too current work.
This moves from mini manifestos and slogans lining the corridor that seem to dance off the paper they’re written on, to the vibrant tapestries in the final room that form a carnivalesque backdrop to costumes drawn from performances and family events. Arranged as if dressing real life bodies, these all but burst through the frames as if coming home.
Inbetween are a series SF and Afro futurism inspired digital collages that wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of a Sun Ra record; a constellation of bronze stars cast from Whittle’s tongue; and a sculptural tribute to Barbadian musician Denis Blackman, who was killed in 1995 when his house was swept out to sea during a storm.
While Whittle puts her own experiences at her work’s centre, it comes as well in heartfelt emotional responses to a much bigger set of histories that define her, and which she transforms into a form of visual poetry on a shape shifting canvas.
This manifests itself most furiously in Holding the Line: A Refrain in Two Parts (2021). This thirteen-minute film cuts up archive material of Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020, juxtaposing it with the raging calm of an African river ritual and the defiance of dance as Whittle finds some kind of salvation.
Whittle’s Venice works go further. Entanglement is more than blood (2022) sees a tapestry depicting symbols of protest, care giving, migration and transformation draped over steel gates, a monumental intervention honouring the dead. The spirits of these can be found in Lagareh – The Last Born (2022), Whittle’s film which closes with her recounting the names of black lives lost to state sanctioned violence as they are listed on screen. With Floyd among them, other names include Sheku Bayoh, the Kirkaldy based Sierra Leonean émigré who died of asphyxiation while being restrained by police. Lagareh is dedicated to Bayoh.
If all this risks overwhelming the viewer, Whittle offers up an entire room to pause for thought. The sound of women from community based advocacy initiative for women of African heritage, Project Esperanza Sewing Group, reading their poetry can be heard alongside the tapestry they collaborated on. A portrait of Whittle by her mother hangs as a demonstration of passed down love Two resin based works, Stormy Weather Skylarking (2021), and When skylarking becomes an invitation for touch (or when our auras meet) (2023) do that rarest of things in an otherwise untouchable institution by allowing you to walk in Whittle’s footsteps, and to feel the shape of her hands and feet in something that becomes a meditative shrine. Making a connection is everything in create dangerously.
All this can be viewed from an array of customised furniture shaped to resemble giant commas and full stops. Built for comfort and arranged in each room with feng shui to the fore, the seats are a way of Whittle punctuating her work on a grand scale. Further home comforts are provided in the blankets draped on the back of each sofa.
This again points up the sense of care that Whittle sees as a necessary salve to some of the more troubling worlds she lays bare. Recognising the need to take time out amidst the turmoil and take shelter from the blast is a vital part of the self-protection required to keep living, keep fighting, and keep loving.
This confirms the wisdom of the manifestos as advised at the start of the exhibition. Create dangerously. Step lightly. Remember to keep breathing. And rest.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh, 1stApril-7thJanuary 2024.
The List, May 2023
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