KLA ART 21 is partnering with Art Night to screen the latest work from artist Alberta Whittle. Alberta is a Barbadian-Scottish artist whose practice-led research involves performance, writing, digital collage and video installation. In 2022 she will be representing Scotland at the 59th Venice Biennale.

We are honoured to partner with Art Night to showcase Alberta’s work with a new audience. We originally planned to collaborate with Art Night more closely, with our shared philosophies around what festivals can do for community, sharing art in non traditional spaces, and sharing art with atypical audiences. Both our festivals also work very closely with the artists with a strong focus on collaboration. With the pandemic, our teams were driven to think about how to make festivals that reflect our times, and the values that we want to see. Curated by Helen Nisbet, Art Night 2021’s  programme takes inspiration from defiance in small acts and moments of self-determination, both personal and collective.

Alberta’s film ‘Creating dangerously (we-I insist!)’ is a trilogy comprising Business as usual: hostile environment (a REMIX), HOLDING THE LINE: a refrain in two parts and RESET. Her work resonates with the theme of this year’s KLA ART This is Ours, as it pushes the audience to reflect and confront urgent issues prevalent in the UK that also have reverberations in Uganda such as colonial legacies, public protest, and the power of creation as defiance.

Initially we hoped to screen these films at public spaces as a lead up to the upcoming festival, however Uganda is currently in lockdown after cases rose drastically in a second wave spread of COVID-19. We are now taking this program online and hope it will be a source of insight and introspection as we anticipate KLA ART 21.

‘After a devastating eighteen months of socio-political catastrophe, Creating dan-gerously (we-I insist!) speculates on the optics of protest, channels of refusal, as well as the desire for pleasure and softness. The title of the trilogy entangles research by Edwidge Danticat on the potential for creative action to become a communion between audience and maker, with the title of Max Roach’s album, We Insist: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960). Researched and produced as urgent medita-tions on freedom, this trilogy of films attempts to straddle a sense of looking back and looking forward whilst still being immersed in both epidemiological and politi-cal strife’. – Alberta Whittle