It's that time of year again! We are super excited, not only to take part, but to help broadcast the line-up of the 2019 Nuart Festival taking place in Stavanger, Norway from September 5-8, 2019. As always, Nuart founder Martyn Reed sets a proper stage for the current state of street art in his articulate, thematic curation. This year, we got the announcement under the guise of "Brand New, You're Retro." Check out the opening statement from Nuart and see the gallery above for artists in this year's line-up.
ARTIST LINE-UP
1UP (DE), Paul Harfleet (UK), Dr. D (UK), Dotmaster (UK), Edwin (UK), Jad El Khoury (LB), Jofre Oliveras (ES), Julio Anaya Cabanding (ES), OX (FR), Nuno Viegas (PT), Hyuro (AR).
As Nuart Festival kicks off its 19th edition, we once again bring a host of international artists to the city of Stavanger to help make sense of the world and how to better navigate it. Through the creation of public artworks, both sanctioned and not, Nuart aims to challenge existing narratives, generate new ideas, and push the boundaries of what constitutes public and private space. This year, we focus on the evocative intersection of memory and the city, and the role of art on the streets in unraveling and reworking not only a city's collective memories, but also the cultures. New takes on old forms, graffiti merging with street art, classicism with vandalism, the advertising of subvertising, gentrification, rights to the city and in the case of one artist, rights to life itself. As Italo Calvino wrote, “the city… contains [its memories] like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets….”
Stavanger provides a plenteous bedrock on which Nuart has built some of the most lauded names in street art. And this year, we welcome the return of pivotal artist Dotmaster, whose early works can still be spotted on the side streets of the city. The ghosts of these works, and indeed, the numerous other pieces which have fallen prey to developers in the region, still linger in the local consciousness and on street art blogs which diligently captured their creation. The city plays a key role in helping us let go, in many senses – letting go of these artworks and the constraints we often find ourselves. But the city and its people continue to amaze each year.
Individual memories of people and the experiences we cherish are often tied to particular places. Locations may evoke a sense of warmth, but they can equally evoke pain and trauma – sometimes from millennia past, sometimes from the previous day's news broadcast. We've been lucky to work with artists whose own lived experiences help us understand that creative acts of rebellion can mean a lot more than pretty pictures on walls. We look forward to welcoming Jad El Khoury (Beirut) recipient of the first Nuart Residency to the streets of Stavanger. His work heals his own city's memories and imagines new futures.
The back lanes, underpasses, and city thoroughfares will have their own stories to share, and we look forward to working with this year's lineup as they explore Stavanger to create new works for 2019. With each festival, we add another layer to the canon of international street art, soon to be distant memories that pop up on social media timelines – and we'll take pleasure in knowing they become collective memories, enjoyed by many, not just the few!
