This June 9th through 12th, Nuart Aberdeen is back to paint the infamously gray Granite City in Scotland with full force once more, after last year’s abbreviated edition featuring a series of staggered artist residencies and Nuart’s inventive ‘Stuck Up’ program, where artists from around the world sent paper artworks for the festival team to wheatpaste on a vast wall of fame. The seminal street art event announced their 2022 lineup on May 1st, International Workers Day, “to connect with and honour those essential workers that governments the world over continue to undermine, attack and disenfranchise.”
The theme of “RECONNECT” will drive Nuart’s first full edition since the pandemic, working in collaboration with Aberdeen Inspired and Aberdeen City Council to welcome a roster of 11 semi-local and visiting artists from Spain, Portugal, the US and beyond. Street Art United States will even be reporting live from the event, but more on that later.
“As we emerge blinking from the uncertainty and radical disconnection of the past two years of lockdown and social distancing, it is disorienting to rediscover those social connections and relationships to the people, places and spaces of our cities that have been stretched to the limit and in many cases broken and lost,” Nuart’s release explains. “No longer objects of risk, fear and constant surveillance, we hope Nuart’s ‘reconnect’ edition can help to dial down the background anxiety that had become part of our daily lives.”
The team has infused fresh talent into this year’s lineup to commemorate the occasion. Scottish stencil artist James Klinge makes his Nuart debut, and Spanish superstar Pejac–best known for his heartfelt use of striking visual tactics like trompe l’oeil optical illusion–will make what the Nuart team calls “a rare festival appearance.” Rising talents like Portuguese graffiti writer and fine artist Nuno Viegas and London-based artist and trans rights activist Erin Holly will return to perhaps offer new developments in their practices. Meanwhile, Norway-based Miss.Printed “will delight and surprise audiences with her delicate miniature paper collages placed in the streets.”
Miss.Printed will also lead a street collage workshop open to the Aberdeen public on Sunday, June 12th–just part of the community-centric, educational, but of course, edgy–programming that makes Nuart proper so special. It is about paint, but it’s also about people–whether society technically deems them artists or not. Stay tuned for more on Nuart’s extracurriculars too.
Of course, fan favorites and old friends return to anchor the “RECONNECT” roster, forging a narrative thread through Nuart’s past, present, and future. Martin Whatson “reconnects with a new piece having lost his earlier work to developers,” the release explains, and “activist Jofre Oliveras’s murals promise new connections with the city’s spaces.” Fellow Spanish artist Slim Safont returns after partaking of last year’s abbreviated iteration, tying it all together.
We’re looking forward to sharing the story with you as it unfolds. In the meantime, we hope you bask in the full Nuart Aberdeen 2022 lineup and get excited to see how it all goes down!
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NUART ABERDEEN 2022 ARTIST LINE-UP
Elisa Capdevila (ES) – Erin Holly (UK) – Jacoba Niepoort (DK) – James Klinge (SC) – Jofre Oliveras (ES) – Martha Cooper (US) – Martin Whatson (NO) – Miss.Printed (NO) – Mohamed L’Ghacham (MA) – Nuno Viegas (PT) – Pejac (ES) – Slim Safont (ES)
