Nuart Aberdeen is back for 2022. After a few years of curtailment due to the pandemic, new artists will be added to the walls of the city. As with other festivals the street art will be joined with a series of talks and local events.
This year has already seen a lot of change for the street art in Aberdeen. The market building overlooking East Green has been demolished taking a number of established street pieces with it. Most prominently, Herakut’s portrait of a girl painted during the first festival in 2017 has disappeared. Other murals of note to go include Ben Eine’s ‘Shiny Happy People’ and Snik’s 2021 mural painted to the theme of connection. Sadly Hyuro’s squabbling cousins from 2018 has also been demolished. The Argentine artist sadly passed away in November 2020 and her mural had been hugely popular in the city.
But this is the often the nature of street art and so it remains to be seen just where the new murals will appear within the city walls. The latest raft of artists offers another exciting mix of national and international artists. Their styles ranging across a variety of disciplines. Their combination likely to add to what is already one of the countries top street art galleries.
Artists Announced for Nuart Aberdeen 2022
Elisa Capdevila (Spain)
Elisa Capdevila is a muralist and painter based in Barcelona. Her artistic career began in 2014, when she studied painting and drawing in a traditional school in Barcelona. She started painting murals during that time, first as a mere exercise where the canvas was replaced by a wall, later realising its broader possibilities and deciding to focus her personal work around these larger scale projects. Since 2017 she has been actively working at urban art festivals, developing large murals both nationally (Barcelona, Zaragoza, Oviedo, Córdoba) and internationally (Iceland, India, Belgium, France, México) as well as spending the time between these projects at her studio in Barcelona developing her personal work on canvas.
Erin Holly (UK)
Erin Holly is an artist painting indoors on canvas and activating public spaces with her murals. She has also implemented and curated a DIY art venue called the Abacus and a street art project in Cardiff Wales called Empty Walls between 2013 and 2015. Erin seeks collaborations in and around the LGBTQ+ community and is an activist for trans rights.
Jacoba Niepoort (Denmark)
JACOBA is a Copenhagen-based muralist who has been painting in the public space since 2009. Scale is a personal obsession, and the streets are often her playground, because they are where everyday people move. JACOBA’s work is grounded in her belief that connectedness facilitates a better understanding of self and others, and is a powerful tool to address and change current social issues. Through her work, she shares and visually dissects the most naked and personal of the life experiences of herself and others on the grounds that emotions which are most personal are often universally felt. She aims to interrupt the mainstream feelings of disconnection, indifference, bias, and “-isms”, through showing that underneath, we are alike, thus seeking to humanize that which has become dehumanized or alienated.
James Klinge (Scotland)
James Klinge was born in Glasgow, Scotland where he continues to live and work. His work is primarily figurative using intricate and detailed hand cut stencils as the foundation of the process, yet he describes the process of his paintings as a controlled chaos. It is difficult to see that his paintings begin from stencils as he shows a complimentary blend of intense detail with expressive strikes from his palette knife, bringing an abstraction to his paintings from attacking the canvas.
Jofre Oliveras (Spain)
Jofre Oliveras identifies himself as an explorer, landscaper, and activist. He uses art as a communication tool with a social focus. The main location for his work is in public space. His community-based and self-sufficient lifestyle led him to become part of Konvent, a cultural and artistic community organised residency space. He has produced works and organized events with an international trajectory in the muralism sector and as a realist painter. Oliveras’ works involve the creation of a new connection with space. His research explores new contexts, and he uses many different types of creative processes and materials inspired by the landscape.
Martha Cooper (USA)
Martha Cooper has specialized in documenting urban art and architecture for over forty years. Martha’s books include Subway Art, a collaboration with Henry Chalfant, R.I.P.: Memorial Wall Art, Hip Hop Files 1980-1984, We B*Girlz, Street Play, New York State of Mind, Tag Town, Going Postal, Name Tagging, Tokyo Tattoo 1970, and One Week with 1UP. Spray Nation, containing Martha’s previously unpublished New York City graffiti photos from the 1980s, will be released in the fall of 2022.
Martin Whatson (Norway)
Martin Whatson is a Norwegian street artist best known for his calligraphic scribbles in grayscale voids. He was an active part of the emerging graffiti scene in Oslo in the early 90’s which at the time maintained zero tolerance. The physical architecture of the city was a constant inspiration, the elaboration and destruction of each generation contributing to the urban infrastructure. Over the past decade, Martin has developed an unmistakable aesthetic combining abstract movement with figurative stencilled compositions. His works mirror the rise and fall of the streets, as he symbolically recreates the urban environment, then vandalises it to reveal his vibrant transformations. Martin’s work has featured at festivals, projects and walls globally. His original work can be found in private collections and institutions with solo exhibitions featured in cities from Tokyo to LA, London to New York.
Miss.Printed (Norway)
Miss.Printed is a Norwegian based artist who is filling the gap between collage, photography and street art. Her passion is “Locative Collage”. She makes small paper collages and photograph them in an outdoor setting that reinforces the story she wants to tell. Her collages are then photographed on location under adverse conditions. She loves to combine paper elements and their predators: water, fire, snow, wind and sky. In an urban environment she leaves her papercuts behind for others to reflect upon. She believes in the accumulation of small gestures. Miss.Printed has worked with Locative Collage and collage since 2014. She has had several exhibitions in Norway, UK and the USA. In August 2016, she opened The Scandinavian Collage Museum. She is the founder of The Collageclub, an international group of collage artists. She is also the founder of the Collage Garden, a project which grows paper gardens around the world.
Mohamed L’Ghacham (Morocco)
Mohamed L’Ghacham is a painter and muralist born in Tangier (Morocco) and based in Mataró (Barcelona). Always interested in the Plastic Arts, he discovered the world of graffiti and years later he started to be attracted by Classical painters and the language they use. His work is mainly figurative with a realistic aspect and Impressionist touches. He creates scenes from everyday life happening around him. All of this is combined with the visual imagery of late 20th century photography. He currently bases his work on a mixture of painting and classical techniques in the form of contemporary muralism.
Nuno Viegas (Portugal)
Nuno Viegas also known as Metis, is a Portuguese artist born in Faro and raised in Quarteira. He is the founder of the art collective Policromia Crew and started his artistic journey with graffiti in 1999. After completing his studies in Visual Arts at the University of Algarve he moved to Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2014) where he discovered a new artistic identity and began to develop paintings strongly influenced by the graffiti scene. This has been the focal point of the artist’s production and his greatest source of inspiration. Nuno presents us a contrast between the visually aggressive and sometimes dirty reality of traditional graffiti and its peaceful and clean representation in his works.
Pejac (Spain)
Pejac is a Spanish painter whose works include outdoor murals, often utilising trompe-l’œil techniques. “I prefer to speak with a soft voice,” Pejac stated in one of his rare interviews, metaphorically describing his poetic approach to creating subtle, yet impactful studio pieces and urban interventions. “When people speak with a soft voice, others draw closer to listen.” Pejac is very particular when it comes to choosing the right place, right context, and right medium or tools, for a certain message.
Slim Safont (Spain)
Slim Safont was born in Berga (Barcelona) and graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona. He is a muralist and painter, mainly interested in urban art and interventions in public space. His works are large-format paintings that use the walls of the streets as canvases. He works on topics closely linked to the different daily lives he discovers in the social contexts where he works. Slim has participated nationally and internationally in the sector’s festival scene since 2017. He has recently been working on a large format oil painting that will be exhibited and auctioned in New York in a collaborative project between Sothebys and Burning Man. He is co-founder and member of @malpais.malpais, a polyhedral OFF SPACE focused on artistic production with an exhibition space and annual programming.
Nuart Aberdeen will take place over the weekend of 9-12 June 2022. In addition to the street art the festival will include a series of talks, films and guided walks. All photos of the artists work and descriptions used in this article are courtesy of Nuart.
