Alberta Whittle (b. 1980, Bridgetown) lives and works in Glasgow. Whittle’s multifaceted practice is preoccupied with developing a personal response to the legacies of the Atlantic slave trade, unpicking its connections to institutional racism, white supremacy and climate emergency in the present. Against an oppressive political background Whittle aims to foreground hope and engage with different forms of resistance.

In 2024, Whittle presented an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Philadelphia with Dominique White, as well as presenting a new solo commission at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute. In 2023, Whittle produced a major exhibition of her career to date at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh. She represented Scotland in the 59th Venice Biennale and is a 2022 recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Awards for Artists. In 2020, she was awarded a Turner Bursary and the Frieze Artist Award. She was the Margaret Tait Award winner for 2018/19. Whittle recently received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh.

Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘Under the skin of the ocean, the thing urges us up wild’, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute (2024); ‘“Even in the most beautiful place in the world, our breath can falter”.’, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2023); ‘Alberta Whittle: between a whisper and a cry’, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); ‘create dangerously’, Modern One, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh(2023);  ‘Dipping below a waxing moon, the dance claims us for release’, The Holburne Museum, Bath (2023); ‘deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory’, Scotland + Venice, 59th Venice Biennale (2022); ‘Congregation (Creating Dangerously)’, Grand Union, Birmingham (2022); ‘RESET’, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2021); ‘business as usual: hostile environment’, Glasgow Sculpture Studios (Part of Glasgow International 2021); and ‘How flexible can we make the mouth’, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2019). 

Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Conversations’, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2024); ‘Flow States – La Trienal 2024’, El Museo del Barrio, New York  (2024); ‘Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art, 1950s–Now’, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2023); British Art Show 9, touring to Aberdeen Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, and The Box Plymouth (2021-2022); ‘Moving Bodies, Moving Images’, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); ‘Twilight Land’, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2022); ‘Black Melancholia’, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson (2022); ‘Sex Ecologies’, Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway (2021); ‘Life between islands: Caribbean British Art 1950s - Now’, Tate Britain, London (2021); ‘Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism’, Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow (2021); and the 13th Havana Biennial, Wilfredo Lam Center, Havana, Cuba (2019).