[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Louisa Buck (The Artwork Newspaper) writes, “The Barbados-born Scottish artist’s work will deal with oceanic histories and the town’s traumatising photos of enslaved Black individuals hidden in plain sight.”
Artist: Alberta Whittle / Organisers: Glasgow Worldwide; Scotland+Venice / The place: Arsenale Docks Cantieri Cucchini
Alberta Whittle makes typically site-specific work in movie, sculpture, print, efficiency and set up that attracts on analysis into the African diaspora and the decolonisation of Western histories in addition to responding to present occasions. Whittle was born in 1980 in Bridgetown, Barbados, however has lived in Glasgow for a few years. Her background has knowledgeable a physique of labor whose main themes embody colonialism, xenophobia, local weather change and, now, the worldwide pandemic. She says that her inventive observe is motivated by the need to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key strategies in battling anti-Blackness.
What are your emotions about representing Scotland in Venice? I used to be actually moved. I’ve lived in Scotland all of my grownup life however I’m from a former colonial outpost and I’m most likely not precisely what the Scottish public would assume a Scottish artist was. The work for Venice may be very a lot a mirrored image about my emotions of being Black and Scottish, and what which means by way of life expectancy and by way of hope. Additionally, I’m occupied with togetherness: how do we actually nurture new methods of pondering or historical past and the way will we really bridge these geographic and historic gaps?
Are you displaying movie work in Venice? Sure, it’s a movie work with an accompanying set up, titled deep dive (pause) uncoiling reminiscence. It’s oceanic histories however can also be about historical past as a method of digging deeper and permitting for these moments of recognition. As a result of as a lot as I take into consideration the luxurious of amnesia, I believe all of us actually have these reminiscences within the physique, it’s simply [that] we’ve chosen to not recognise them.
With its histories of world commerce, colonialism and slavery, the context of Venice chimes with many themes in your work. I’m at all times interested in international locations who disavow their relationship to world capitalism or to slavery. It’s an fascinating stickiness in the subject material and as a location the place the work goes to dwell for the following six months. Elements of the movie had been shot in Venice as a result of I needed the situation to speak to the work and for it to be a part of the narrative and a part of the feel of how all these totally different histories hyperlink collectively.
The town has an particularly vexed relationship with Blackness, from Shakespeare’s Othello—the so-called Moor of Venice—to the problematic proliferation of Black individuals used as ornamental motifs all through the town.
How we aestheticise Blackness and the way it’s consumed is one thing I’ve at all times been struck with and I would like the work to talk of this as nicely. In Venice these photos are hidden however they’re additionally there in plain sight. It’s a difficult line to cross as a result of when these photos are so readily consumed they change into sanitised, however additionally they play into why techniques are the best way they’re, and the way they brutalise Black individuals. But there’s additionally a grief in having to devour these photos of Blackness—there’s a trauma that I can’t keep away from. One of many issues that I actually wish to do within the movie is to withstand traumatising or re-traumatising an viewers, whereas additionally paying consideration to what’s actually in entrance of our eyes, that we refuse to see. How will we recognise these photos for what they’re, that they aren’t cute, that they’re really actually troublesome, that they’re horrors?
Venice can also be acutely weak to shifts in sea degree because of local weather change, which is one other main problem explored in your work. Given the physique of labor and analysis I’ve been occupied with, I can’t consider a greater venue than Venice proper now, which is basically so precarious and a lot on the frontline—particularly occupied with the ocean as an vital place of information and the way that’s linked to grief and loss. Even with one of the best plans and preparations, it’s nonetheless up within the air what will occur.
For authentic article, see https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/04/11/scottish-pavilion-alberta-whittle-unravels-venices-often-troubling-relationship-with-blackness