Alberta Whittle
Alberta Whittle, The Axe Forgets, but the Tree Remembers, 2022 (film still). © Alberta Whittle. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow 2023 Alberta Whittle, The Axe Forgets, but the Tree Remembers, 2022 (film still). © Alberta Whittle. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow 2023 Alberta Whittle, The Axe Forgets, but the Tree Remembers, 2022 (film still). © Alberta Whittle. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow 2023 Alberta Whittle, The Axe Forgets, but the Tree Remembers, 2022 (film still). © Alberta Whittle. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow 2023
As part of the Crafted Selves exhibition, the Scottish premiere of Alberta Whittle’s film The Axe Forgets, but the Tree Remembers screened at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews on Wednesday 17 January, 2024.
The film features the stories of the Windrush generation and their descendants. Weaving together the experiences of her own family, stories sourced from Hackney Archives and conversations with the borough’s Windrush residents, Whittle’s film highlights the animosity experienced by those who first migrated from the Caribbean to the UK.
Alberta Whittle, The Axe Forgets, but the Tree Remembers, 2022
Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow 2023. Part of the Hackney Windrush Public Programme, 2022, curated by Create London in partnership with Hackney Council, with support from Freelands Foundation.
Alberta Whittle: Having that Dual Identity, you really almost experience identity as a constantly mutating embodiment, especially dependent on where you are geographically.
Biography
Barbadian-Scottish artist Alberta 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.
Whittle 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 presented a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and from April 2023 – January 2024 had a major solo presentation on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), Edinburgh. In early October Whittle opened her first exhibition at The Modern Institute, Osborne Street, Glasgow.