create dangerously was an immersive exhibition which invited visitors 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 was 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 offered visitors 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 wass 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’.
Works in this exhibition openly addressed racism, chattel enslavement, violence and grief. Texts throughout the exhibition consider these issues and themes, and how they relate to colonialism.
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Modern One, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
01/04/2023—07/01/2024