The new format festival also foregrounds reasons to come together, and see collaborations with their many gallery partners in the city for parties, performances, and one-off events, as well as partnerships with

Edinburgh International Book Festival, Forma, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Forma, TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, Horizon Showcase, and The Common Guild.

The new dates for the UK's biggest visual art festival are 11–27 August 2023, allowing for three full weeks, including a trio of weekends of talks, performances, and one off events, aligning in date and in collaboration with other festivals in the city. From queer histories in brutalist tower blocks; to tracing peace lines and borders through sound, moving image and music; and the festival’s continuing commitment to support structures, the 2023 festival-led programme features artists, thinkers, writer and performers who move through this world deeply connected to feminist and queer practice. This may take various forms: an opera; a poem; the sound of a ricochet along a peace wall; a newspaper excerpt; a bodily gesture; a warming meal.

Kim McAleese, Festival Director, says, “I am delighted to share this programme, my first for Edinburgh Art Festival. It’s a programme that asks how we can connect with and find mutual support internationally, platforming artists, individuals and communities who can find alternative ways to resist. I believe in the generative process of collaboration and want to embrace it by connecting, amplifying, promoting and sharing individuals, organisations, and projects that have an intimacy with these values. By punctuating the festival with a series of special weekend events, we can open up the festival to new audiences, and in dialogue with other art forms and other festivals across the city in a spirit of collaboration. This year’s programme guides you through our core galleries across the city, to parliament buildings for live performances, to Leith for public artworks, and Sculpture Gardens outside of Edinburgh for queer parties.”

Edinburgh Art Festival 2023 commissions are announced for the first time today, as follows:

Sean Burns’ Dorothy Towers is the story of the legendary Clydesdale and Cleveland Towers, two residential blocks in the centre of Birmingham, UK. Completed in 1971 as a social housing development and located adjacent to the city’s Gay Village, the towers’ proximity to the community means they have long been a haven for LGBTQ+ people. The 16mm film and installation opens a space to reflect on the complex relationship between architecture, community and memory. Shown at the French Institute, it features testimonials from current and past residents and explores ideas of queer kinship and inheritance alongside experiences of HIV in the 1980s and ’90s. In Edinburgh, the work will catalyze a series of discussions and events tracing the themes present in the work to concurrent histories and realities in the city. This will coincide with workshops and discussions on Edinburgh’s queer histories throughout the festival with partners, including the Lothian Health Services Archives and Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive. The film is screened across the festival dates.

The opening performance on 11 August at the Queen’s Hall, History of the Present, will see Northern Irish writer Maria Fusco collaborate with Scottish artist film-maker Margaret Salmon and composer Annea Lockwood, on a hybrid opera on stage and screen that will be performed live. It is a new experimental opera-film forefronting working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak and in what way? Layering sociological, cultural, and political themes from the recent history of Northern Ireland, the work exercises voice, breath and field-recording composition through a range of film techniques and operatic articulations, amplifying marginalised stories. Made on 35mm and SD video in the streets of Belfast, the Royal Opera House and the Ulster Museum, History of the Present observes how defensive architecture defines movement to enforce intersectional histories and identities within daily experiences in conflict and post-conflict zones. Written and co-directed by Maria Fusco, who grew up beside a peaceline in Belfast during The Troubles, the work commemorates the 25th anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement. This will be the world performance premiere of the work.

Alberta Whittle: The Last Born – making room for ancestral transmissions

This newly-commissioned performance, presented by EAF, National Galleries of Scotland and Forma, takes Alberta Whittle’s most recent moving image work, Lagareh – The Last Born as inspiration. Anchored around theories of abolition, rebellion, ancestral knowledge and love, the film melds a collection of scenes that give focus to the strength of contemporary Black womxn, whose individual acts of resistance are bound together through the artist’s conceptual storytelling. In this new performance, at Parliament Hall, the buildings housing the Supreme Courts of Scotland, scenes and moments from Lagareh – The Last Born will be re-enacted and reconfigured, encouraging the audience to continue to think about the poetics of abolition and how love and grief can become healing forms of release. This will coincide with the Scotland + Venice selected artist’s major solo exhibition, create dangerously, at National Galleries of Scotland: National. This performance takes place on 13 August.

JUPITER RISING joins forces with EAF to throw one of the biggest one-night only parties in Edinburgh curated by artist Lindsey Mendick and collective Bonjour, a queer workers’ coop based in Glasgow. JUPITER RISING is Scotland’s artist-led art, music and performance festival championing queer and underrepresented communities hosted in the iconic landscape of Jupiter Artland on 19 August. Expect BBQ, karaoke, live art and music and more.

Haven for Artists is a cultural feminist organisation based in Beirut, Lebanon, a community of many people, working together to organise, support, campaign, nurture and create in a country in a multi-dimensional crisis, through cultural programming. EAF have invited Haven for Artists, to spend time in-residence during the festival with a programme of activities, connecting with local organisations and initiatives, as well as launching our festival with an ‘Opening Provocation’, in conversation with Turner Prize winners Array Collective. Haven will also collaborate with the Wester Hailes Community Wellbeing Collective, for a day of conversation, food and an open mic – exploring what urgencies, desires and offerings can be shared across borders, and how to care collectively and create spaces of safety and respite in a world of precarity. The Opening Provocation will be on 12 August, at the National Galleries of Scotland, and the event with Community Wellbeing Collective on 20 August in Wester Hailes.

Now in its 9th edition, Platform: Early Career Artist Award celebrates early-career artists working in Scotland, with the opportunity to make and exhibit new work. This year’s artists selected from an open call are Aqsa Arif, Crystal Bennes, Rudy Kanhye, and Richard Maguire.The artists have come together to address a diverse set of concerns spanning race, climate change, and food justice, to cultural identity in Scotland. Selectors for the exhibition are Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, London and Iarlaith Ní Fheorais, curator and writer based between Ireland and the UK, alongside our Director Kim McAleese. The exhibition runs across the full festival dates at Trinity Apse, an old Gothic church off the Royal Mile.

On 26 August, at the French Institute, EAF and Collective present BEAST! a performance work by the French artist and poet Tarek Lakhrissi, exploring bestiality as a philosophical and political concept by drawing on the stigma that historically frames queer people and people who belong to the global majority as monstrous. Through the reading of recent romantic and critical poems, accompanied by the lyrical vocals of

Makeda Monnet and the electronic music of Victor da Silva (Fatma Pneumonia), the show will be interspersed with utopian queer passions, dark corners to protect oneself, erotic dreams and free moments of improvisation. All the poems are from Lakhrissi’s last poetry book LE SANG! (BLOOD!) published by Lafayette Anticipations. Lakhrissi is also presenting a solo show I wear my wounds on my tongue (II) at Collective to coincide with EAF.

Edinburgh-based poet Nat Raha presents the first iteration of a performance work epistolary (on carceral islands) commissioned for EAF 2023 x TULCA Festival of Visual Arts (Galway), addressing the history and development of island prisons across the globe through the colonial project of the British Empire. This takes place on 18 August. The work travels from Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, to outposts of ‘empyre’ such as Spike Island, Ireland, and to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. The performance will take the form of a sonically expansive, trans-historical poem-letter addressed to her ancestors incarcerated for anti-colonial revolt. Raha considers what the rise and fall of these carceral islands can teach us about contemporary abolitionist struggles, addressing international connections and strategies in anti-colonial revolt from a transfeminist perspective. The event takes place on 18 August at 50 George Square, generously supported by the University of Edinburgh.

Initiated by The Common Guild, EAF will co-present an illuminated artwork by Rabiya Choudhry at Leith Library. The design is based on a painting by Choudhry, part of the artist’s ongoing project Lost Lighting – a series of lighting artworks for public places intended to ‘act like a vigil in the dark’ Taking shape as illuminated signs, they repurpose Andrew Carnegie’s flaming torch motif; a feature found on many Carnegie library buildings In Choudhry’s work, the torch is encircled with the words of African-American civil rights activist Ella Baker (1903–1986) who worked to instigate societal change. Baker’s words ‘give light and people will find the way’, are a manifestation of power for ordinary people. The public artwork runs across the full festival dates, visible 24 hours a day.

Rachel Mars invites you to a performance at Lyceum Workshop. In 2014 the 100kg iron "welcome" gate was stolen from Dachau concentration camp. A local blacksmith forged a replica. Exactly like the original. Almost. Over three days, Rachel Mars asks you to bear witness as she welds together another copy. Presented by Horizon Showcase, this impactful durational performance installation with live welding and atmospheric sound-world by Dinah Mullen explores who memorials are for and who decides. We will also bring together the artist and a panel of speakers for a conversation about memorial, public space and architecture in Edinburgh on 21 August.

Festivals love dialogue, and EAF have joined with the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival for a new Sunday Salon series. Each Sunday afternoon, the festivals will host a lineup of artists working across literature, film and art to talk about the finer details of their work and practice in an intimate setting.

Partner galleries will present a range of exhibitions, the majority of which will be open to the public for free for the festival. Explore a new part of the city through the EAF commissions and the partner exhibitions - learn more about these on the Edinburgh Art Festival website.

Head of Visual Arts at Creative Scotland, Amanda Catto, said: “We’re delighted to be a supporter of the Edinburgh Art Festival, the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. The spirit of collaboration at the heart of the festival creates exciting opportunities for artists and for audiences. If you’re living in or visiting Edinburgh in August the Art Festival is the place to find some of the best exhibitions, events and performances this summer. Taking place in established and less well-known spaces in the city, and with work from world leading artists as well as those at much earlier stages in their career, there’s so much to look forward to. Congratulations to the Festival, its partners and all the artists involved.”

Culture Minister Christina McKelvie said: “The Edinburgh Art Festival is a great opportunity to showcase the work of Scottish-based artists, especially previously under-represented artists who we’re proud to support with £130,000 through the Scottish Government’s Expo Fund. In partnership with the City of Edinburgh Council we also support new artists and curators at the wellbeing arts space at Wester Hailes and Platform with £215,000 through our PLACE Fund to support community engagement.”

Background

For all media enquiries

Nicola Jeffs - nj@nicolajeffs.com

Edinburgh Art Festival is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. Founded in 2004, we work with local and international partners to present an ambitious and meaningful programme of exhibitions, events and projects across the city.

Since its beginnings, the festival has featured exhibitions including international and UK artists at a pivotal point in their career alongside the best emerging talent, major survey exhibitions of historic figures, and a programme of newly commissioned artworks that respond to historic sites in the city.

The festival’s year-round community engagement programme has long-term relationships and partnerships across the city, creating relevant and memorable experiences with artists. We invite local people to explore culture, community, the city and self-expression, and value, with many festival projects reflecting this unique creative relationship.

www.edinburghartfestival.com | @EdArtFest

Our public funders are: Creative Scotland, the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland distributing funding provided by the Scottish Government and The National Lottery. Further information at creativescotland.com. We are also supported by City of Edinburgh Council.

Our major programme supporters are: the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland; and Event Scotland.

Edinburgh Art festival is delighted to partner with Edinburgh World Heritage, British Council, Arts Council England & Horizon Showcase, Cruden Foundation, Forma, GCAS, National Galleries of Scotland, National Lottery Awards for All Scotland, and Bloomberg Connects for their 2023 programme.