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 tapestrie
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.