Edinburgh Art Festival announce 2023 programme

This year’s festival is condensed into three weeks of dynamic exhibitions, performances and screenings across the city. Sean Burns’s Dorothy Towers will tell the story of the legendary Clydesdale and Cleveland Towers, two residential blocks in Birmingham. The film ‘opens a space to reflect on the complex relationship between architecture, community and memory’, and will reflect on ideas of queer kinship and inheritance alongside experiences of people living with HIV during the 1980s and 90s. Northern Irish writer Maria Fusco will unveil History of the Present in collaboration with Scottish filmmaker Margaret Salmon and composer Annea Lockwood, a hybrid opera on stage and screen that will be performed live during the festival. A new experimental opera-film forefronting working-class women’s voices, the work marks the 25th anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement.

The festival's partner programme sees new commissions with galleries across Edinburgh, including National Galleries of Scotland, who have commissioned a new performance by Alberta Whittle, to coincide with her exhibition ‘create dangerously’, which opens 1 April at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Keg de Souza will present new work following a year’s residency at the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden – Shipping Roots will explore colonial legacies through the movement of plant types between the UK, India and Australia, transforming Inverleith House through a series of installations. Rising Tide, meanwhile, will showcase artistic responses to climate change in Oceania at the National Museum of Scotland. Jupiter Artland will host Lindsey Mendick as the artist for their 2023 season, with her practice deploying humour and candour to examine taboo topics and uncomfortable truths. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop will host a new presentation by Glasgow based-artist Adam Lewis Jacob, while an exciting new commission by Christian Noelle Charles titled WHAT A FEELING! (Act One) will take place at Edinburgh Printmakers. This unique presentation of new screenprints by Charles is the first part of a project discussing racial identity, inequality and care.

2023 will also see the annual return of Platform, which celebrates Scotland-based early-career practitioners. This year’s selected artists are Aqsa Arif, Crystal Bennes, Rudy Kanhye, and Richard Maguire, with further information about the artists being released soon. 

This year, the festival has announced writer and broadcaster Gemma Cairney as the new Chair for their board, and Beth Bate, Director of Dundee Contemporary Arts, as Vice-Chair. Of her appointment, Cairney says "I hope to support refreshed and accessible ideas that challenge how we commission, curate and open doors to the wonders of art in this city that I love for its artistic potential."