During Alberta Whittle’s childhood in Barbados, she learned about the dark legacies of colonialism and the Transatlantic slave trade. Yet when she moved to Birmingham as a teenager, and then studied art at Edinburgh College, these topics never came up. “I was really quite shocked, moving to the U.K., going to school in Birmingham, and living and studying in Scotland,” Whittle has said, “by how there was an acute absence of conversation or acknowledgment in terms of these intricate and uneasy relationships between Europe and the Americas, or Asia, or Africa.” Whittle’s bold, topical works in many media address these legacies and relationships. She has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and won the prestigious Frieze Artists Award, and now, at age 42, is having the largest showing of her work to date. It’s in Edinburgh, only 53 miles east of Glasgow, where Whittle lives today. —Elena Clavarino