Protest as Love - Alberta Whittle

Protest as Love by Alberta Whittle is an exclusive, new limited-edition screen print, created for Forma by Alberta as a generous testament to their cherished friendship, which has evolved over three-years of collaboration and support.

This edition, like Alberta’s wider practice, speaks to compassion as resistance - a championing of love as a means to spell the end of discrimination, brutality, racism and anti-Blackness.

Protest as Love is a screen print with silver lettering on Somerset Satin 300gsm paper. 50 prints have been produced, signed and numbered by the artist. The print was made with the expert support from the team at Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Studios.

Alberta Whittle says, ‘Protest as Love is an offering of love and a reminder of our civil liberties to protest and demand change. It was made in appreciation of the love and support I’ve received from my friends at Forma.’

Forma and Alberta began working together in 2020, following Alberta winning the Frieze Artist Award. For the Award, Alberta created her pivotal film RESET, which was co-commissioned and co-produced by Frieze and Forma, and later exhibited at FormaHQ in London before embarking on an international tour, including at Jupiter Artland on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where part of the film was shot. The film responded to the immediate context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the global pandemic and climate emergency, skilfully connecting emergent fears of contagion, moral panic and xenophobia with a call to action: to face and heal injustices and cultivate hope in hostile environments. To celebrate the launch of Protest as Love, Alberta lovingly offered to make the film available to watch online for a limited time via Forma's website over December 2023.

In 2022 Alberta represented Scotland as part of Scotland + Venice’s presentation at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, which included a new film co-commissioned by and produced by Forma. The film, Lagareh - The Last Born, is a work anchored around theories of abolition, rebellion, ancestral knowledge and love. A subsequent performance, The Last Born - making room for ancestral transmissions was commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and National Galleries Scotland, in association with Forma in August this year. The performance drew from the film Lagareh, and was presented at Edinburgh Art Festival on the occasion of Alberta’s solo exhibition create dangerously at National Galleries Scotland (1 April 2023 - Sun 7 Jan 2024).

Alberta was born in 1980 in Bridgetown, Barbados, and she lives and works in Glasgow. After studying tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art, she completed a Masters degree at Glasgow School of Art. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, and Research Associate at The University of Johannesburg in South Africa.