Edinburgh Art Festival goes global for its 20th edition, with major shows from Ghana, Ukraine, Poland & USA

This summer’s 20th Edinburgh Art Festival will bring together artists from all over the world, writes its director Kim McAleese

This summer the Edinburgh Art Festival will celebrate its 20th birthday, and we will be reflecting on the conditions under which we live, work, gather and resist. Our programme traces lines through personal histories, the natural world, post-colonial landscapes and the global political stage. It fills me with joy and pride to be surrounded by artists invited from across Scotland, the UK, Europe, Latin America and Asia, who refuse inequity, isolation, destruction and despair (in large ways and in quiet ways). We also want to connect to our context and the city of Edinburgh – to the people and movements who inspire change, enable solidarity and bring people together to work towards collective futures.

Across the city audiences will be able to experience a range of performances across three weekends. At Custom Lane, Leith, dancer and choreographer Mele Broomes presents a newly commissioned outdoor performance, while Prem Sahib will present their performance work Alleus in Castle Terrace Car Park under Edinburgh Castle. The first time Sahib has worked with live vocalists, the work is a polyphony of live and pre-recorded voices. Alleus – “Suella” spelled backwards – re-orders, re-directs and disrupts an anti-immigration speech by former home secretary Suella Braverman. We have also invited global practitioners to reflect on EAF24’s key themes at Edinburgh College of Art, in an opening proposition of how to make art at a time of global crises.

This year you will find our main home at the City Art Centre, in the heart of the Old Town. There you will find Sanctus! a new film installation by Renèe Helèna Browne exploring devotion in relation to portraiture, faith, and belonging. Also at the City Art Centre, Karol Radziszewski’s curated exhibition collects rare photographs and ephemera to trace the history of Filo Magazine, one of the first underground queer magazines in Central-Eastern Europe, founded by activist Ryszard Kisiel. Begun in response to Polish communist police suppression of sexual minorities, Filo furthered activist conversations about sexuality, creativity and politics. Meanwhile, this year’s PLATFORM early-career artists Alaya Ang, Edward Gwyn Jones, Tamara MacArthur and Kialy Tihngang will respond directly to the themes of the 2024 programme, centering intimacy, material memory, protest and persecution.

Work from Daria Svertliova's Temporary Homes series at Stills PIC: courtesy of the artist / Stills

You will also find this year’s EAF across the city, inviting you to look at the urban environment in new ways as you traverse it. EAF have invited Rosie’s Disobedient Press, a collaborative project by artists Lisette May Monroe and Adrien Howard, to reflect on EAF’s 20th Birthday and on the landscape of the city. Rosie’s will present works of textual intervention which will appear in print, on clothing, across windows and banners throughout the city. Remnants: How you re-assemble a city will also launch for EAF – a free newspaper for Edinburgh, created by feminist architecture collective Voices of Experience, EAF and Panel. Aiming to connect to Edinburgh’s past and present, it will be available at Leith Library, City Art Centre, and across Edinburgh throughout August.

Our partner galleries and venues are a vital part of our programme. In the centre of town, at Fruitmarket, Ibrahim Mahama is making a brand new body of work inspired by the gallery’s unique physical location, supported on columns above Waverley railway station. This proximity to – and dependence on – the railway is the starting point for large scale drawings, sculpture and installations referencing his own interest in and using material from the now defunct colonial-era railway of Ghana. At Talbot Rice Gallery, El Anatsui’s exhibition will comprise a large selection of his iconic sculptural wall hangings, wooden reliefs and works on paper and will be the most significant exploration of his practice ever staged in the UK. Los Angeles based painter Hayley Barker will make her first exhibition in Europe at the Ingleby Gallery, where landscape and nature paintings strike a seemingly impossible harmony between intimacy and grandeur. At the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Do Ho Suh creates architectural structures and other objects using fabric, in what the artist describes as an “act of memorialisation.”

The programme allows us to look at recent and current socio-political history in new ways. Women in Revolt! is the National Galleries of Scotland’s survey of feminist art that celebrates the women who challenged and changed the face of British culture, restaged in Scotland following its presentation at Tate Britain. The Edinburgh Seven Tapestry, meanwhile, at Edinburgh Futures Institute, commemorates the first women to matriculate at a British university. Designed by Christine Borland and created by Dovecot Studios, the tapestry was created using a combination of traditional and modern materials and techniques and its organic shapes are based on cellular structures in motion. At the National Museum of Scotland, a new exhibition draws on Scotland’s rich history of Cold War-era protest and activism and Stills Centre for Photography presents Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words – a touring showcase in which contemporary Ukrainian photographers explore the meaning of home.

Across the city, Laura Aldridge and Andrew Sim will transform Jupiter Artland with Aldridge’s richly glazed ceramics, light, videos, textiles and sound, alongside Sim’s paintings depicting a dreamlike forest, with plants and trees growing beneath rainbows and star-studded skies. Making a return to Scotland, meanwhile, will be Dovecot Studios’ major tapestry with Chris Ofili. Collective also welcomes back early committee member Moyna Flannigan for an exhibition of new work featuring collages alongside a constellation of paper sculptures that extend the principles of collage into three-dimensions.

Alleus, 2024, by Prem Sahib PIC: Anne Tetzlaff / EAF24

At Edinburgh Printmakers, Ade Adesina will showcase experimental prints combining inspiration from his African roots, British culture and elsewhere into international landscapes, while Tayo Adekunle repurposes the imagery of ethnographic exhibitions into a powerful commentary on the fetishisation of Black women's bodies. Collectively-run gallery Sett Studios will showcase a vibrant range of work from their member artists, alongside a solo show from their youngest member, multidisciplinary creative textiles artist and DJ Rory Dixon. Travelling Gallery is delighted to be partnering with Community Land Scotland to celebrate 100 years of community ownership in Scotland. Through contemporary artists and new commissions, Where We Stand will tell the stories and achievements of the pioneers of community ownership, a movement that has transformed Scotland.

At Inverleith House, through music, literature, fashion, design, scent and visual art, Fungi Forms will take you on a spectacular journey, exploring fungi in science and culture. Also looking at the natural world, the Scottish Gallery hosts two exhibitions. Renowned as a painter of timeless significance, Geoff Uglow's oeuvre stands as a testament to his unwavering originality. His canvases serve as eloquent odes to the natural world, capturing its transient beauty with unparalleled sincerity. Koji Hatakeyama: Scenes in Bronze includes enigmatic, patinated surfaces which represent the landscape, evoking a sense of time.

Our continued evolution is built upon cultivating relationships with local communities, and for EAF24 our civic engagement programme includes work with organisations including LGBT Youth Scotland, SCORE Women’s Group and the EAF Wester Hailes Adult Art Group. We look forward to welcoming you to our exhibitions, performances, discussions, and events, and to celebrating our 20th birthday with you.

Kim McAleese is director of the Edinburgh Art Festival. For more information, see www.edinburghartfestival.com