Reviewing current work by Alberta Whittle, Emily Dinsdale (Dazed) writes, “The artist reveals the motivation behind the brand new exhibition representing Scotland at this 12 months’s Venice Biennale.” [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.]
By the water’s edge, Alberta Whittle’s deep dive (pause) uncoiling reminiscence appears to be like out throughout a glittering Venetian canal amid the spectacle of the floating metropolis’s 59th Worldwide Artwork Exhibition. Utilizing portray, tapestry, metalwork, and movie, the Barbadian-Scottish multimedia artist attracts on the traumatic histories of slavery and empire whereas bringing us into direct contact with a few of the most pressing and essential problems with the day but providing immeasurable tenderness and care.
With an emphasis on “investing in love”, this exhibition confronts what Whittle describes because the “luxurious of amnesia” – a state of privileged communal reminiscence loss wherein we’re capable of neglect and overlook the atrocities of the previous, permitting us to float right into a state of lethargy and inertia. Whereas recalling harrowing tales of human evil, deep dive (pause) uncoiling reminiscence is an extremely therapeutic expertise. “I’m actually attempting to create these moments the place we’re being tended to ourselves, and methods wherein I can supply care to the viewers,” Whittle says. “We’re very a lot at risk of empathy fatigue, however I nonetheless assume our humanity is accessible to us.”
Commissioned for La Biennale di Venezia by the Scotland+Venice partnership (with funding assist from the Nationwide Lottery by way of Inventive Scotland), Whittle excavates the layers of historical past and which means impregnated in materials objects and websites of reminiscence (or lieux de mémoire). Spellbinding tales of tragedy, womanhood, braveness, household, emancipation, loss, lineage, redemption, and, overwhelmingly, of affection, unfurl in a collection of poignant vignettes, poetic spoken phrases, artefacts, songs, and tales.
Whereas the exhibition is ready to tour later within the 12 months, this idyllic canal-side location is an uncannily excellent resting place for an art work wherein water is a recurring presence. Summoning associations of transportation and commerce routes – particularly in a metropolis that was as soon as a world energy constructed on commerce – water permeates the work in myriad methods, embodying what Whittle describes as a “house of loss” and “a graveyard”, additionally as a bearer of secrets and techniques as she speculates, “What tales is the water going to inform?”
I met Alberta Whittle in Venice for a dialog about therapeutic and restoration, why we have to radically unlearn pervasive narratives of white supremacy, and how one can reclaim our humanity and company from the lethargy of cultural amnesia.
Please might you start by introducing us to this work and speaking us by way of the sensory expertise of deep dive (pause) uncoiling reminiscence?
Alberta Whittle: Once I first began occupied with the sensation or the form that I needed the exhibition to take, the story sticking in my thoughts is once I was strolling with my dad, and we have been on the east coast of Barbados throughout lockdown. We got here throughout this rock face and it uncovered all of those corals and all of those layers, and it made me assume a lot about what’s mendacity beneath the floor, and I needed there to be the sense of excavation… connecting very a lot to local weather disaster and waters transferring but additionally, what’s the residue of those completely different occasions that we’re transferring by way of? And what tales is the water gonna inform?
That picture actually echoes the attractive sense of lineage and of bodily objects impregnated with reminiscence and historical past which pervades the entire work.
Alberta Whittle: Reminiscence is a very vital level in my analysis. I feel we’re within the state of the luxurious of amnesia, which is never handled. The title of this work, it’s acquired that very deliberate pause, and that pause is there to encourage us to settle… to settle into this state the place we are able to actually assume, what have we forgotten? And so, by reminiscence, and really virtually utilizing reminiscence research as a approach to encourage this means of unlearning, I feel we are able to actually begin to band collectively and take into consideration change and inspiring completely different voices, intervening into what we perceive of as historical past.
The movie could be very targeted on ladies because the custodians of reminiscence and as healers.
Alberta Whittle: Completely. We by no means hear about ladies as leaders of rebellions, leaders who really lead the wrestle in the direction of abolition. It was actually vital for me to forefront them, as a result of I do know they have been there, I do know these ancestors have been there. And they might have been demonised and punished. However we’ve additionally been silenced. So I needed there to be this multitude of voices from ladies to be on the forefront of this analysis. [. . .]
We’re sat right here in Venice, surrounded by canals. Might you inform me why water is such a recurring presence on this work?
Alberta Whittle: As somebody who grew up on a tiny island, I’ve all the time considered the water as being the place I first began occupied with being artistic and as a spot of rebirth. It was solely once I acquired older and I used to be speaking with my mother and father and my grandparents about how this island was shaped by way of conquest, by way of bloodshed, and thru the subjugation of Black indigenous individuals, after which I began to consider the water way more as being this house of loss and as a graveyard.
In some methods, I feel I’ve made the exhibition house into an area that’s enlivened with ghosts. It’s about giving hospitality to ghosts, and hospitality to historical past. So, relatively than considering of them as hostile or sinister, the exhibition tries to consider: how will we maintain the useless? It’s extra about considering of them as ancestors who we have to create an area of peace for. [. . .]
[. . .] You’re confronting so lots of the most pressing problems with the day however do you accomplish that with an excessive amount of tenderness. I puzzled in the event you might speak a bit of bit about these points and the way you approached them?
Alberta Whittle: For a very long time, I’ve been considering a lot about loss, about abolition, about deportations from the Windrush technology.
I knew that I needed the work to reference individuals who have skilled loss and the way that energy is articulated by way of the hostile setting, by way of systemic racism, or the legacies of empire, and empire-building. However I needed the work right here to signify a multiplicity of tales, a multiplicity of views, that are entangled with occupied with loss, occupied with energy, and occupied with race. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/55947/1/why-artist-alberta-whittle-is-imploring-us-to-invest-in-love
[Shown above: 1) Alberta Whittle, Lagareh, “The Last Born”, film still – single-channel video (2022) Photography Matthew Arthur Williams, © Alberta Whittle. Courtesy the artist, Scotland+Venice, and Forma. 2) Photography Cristiano Corte, © Alberta Whittle. Courtesy the artist, Scotland + Venice.]