Keyword Poster Wheatpasting Workshop & Talkback with Bergman & Salinas and Doreen Abubakar

Join Artspace New Haven in collaboration with Community Placemaking Engagement Networks (CPEN) at the corner of Hazel St. and Shelton Ave. of the Farmington Canal Trail for a wheatpasting workshop with artistic duo Bergman & Salinas to realize their public work Keywords on the Farmington Canal Trail followed by a talkback between the artists and Founder and Executive Director at CPEN and urban environmentalist Doreen Abubakar. Keywords explores the use of typography, design, and words, as they emerge from historical circumstances and become weaponized in social struggle through capitalism. Words such as “WEALTH,” “CLASS,” and “CONSENSUS” are realized on highly-designed posters to interrogate the ways in which we interpret design within the cultural field. Staged on the post-industrial Farmington Canal Trail, they ask viewers to question the systems of industry, advertising, and capitalism around us and their effects upon our social and environmental worlds.

The artwork Keywords is part of the exhibition Against the General Good/ Contra El Bien General featuring Bergman & Salinas and on view September 17–December 3, 2022 at Artspace New Haven, and this in-person workshop is part of its accompanying free public programming series. For in-person programs, Artspace New Haven encourages social distancing in outdoor spaces to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within our community. 

Aeron Bergman (b. Detroit, USA) and Alejandra Salinas (b. La Rioja, Spain) are an artist duo. The pair founded the artist-run space Institute for New Connotative Action: INCA and the independent art publisher INCA Press. They have lived in New York, Toronto, London, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Oslo, Seattle, Portland, and are currently living in Detroit. Bergman and Salinas have shown work internationally at institutions such as the 4th Athens Biennale; 1st Bergen Assembly Triennial; 2007 Turku Biennial; 1st Struer Tracks Sound Art Biennial; Steirischer Herbst 2013, Graz; Fundação de Serralves, Porto; Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK; Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; Kunsthall Aarhus, Denmark; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; ICC Tokyo; IASPIS, Stockholm; Lincoln Center and DAC in New York City; e-flux and Berlin Film Festival in Berlin; Center for Contemporary Art Glasgow; Edinburgh Film Festival and Dundee Contemporary Art in Scotland; MOCA Novi Sad; Taipei Fine Art Museum; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Centre George Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen; Henie Onstad Art Center and Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, MUDAM Luxembourg; Ruler and HIAP in Helsinki; The Luminary, St. Louis, The Ski Club, Milwaukee; and Poor Farm, Wisconsin; FUEGO, Mexico City among many others. Their sound art has been broadcast on radio such as the BBC and Resonance FM, in London; WDR Cologne; R2 Madrid; SV2 Stockholm; Radio France; CBC Canada; WFMU New York; and Taipei Philharmonic Radio. The pair won an award of distinction in digital music at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. Their work has been written about in BOMB Magazine, Temporary Art Review, Afterall, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Times among many others.

Doreen Abubakar, a lifelong New Haven resident and activist, created the Community Placemaking and Engagement Network (CPEN) as a catalyst for community relationship-building, leadership development and public health in the low-income Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven. Focusing on family fitness and outdoor recreation to positively impact the social determinants of health, CPEN established the Learning Corridor along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, a linear park and designated section of East Coast Greenway. The Learning Corridor features a resident-maintained public green-space and Audubon-certified pollinator garden, access to the linear park, a space for festivals and community gatherings, and a bicycle storage facility where community members can access bicycles (and helmets) for use on the trail and in the community. Doreen is an award-winning environmental educator who leads 4-H programs and teaches fishing for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. In 2011 she founded the West River Water Festival, a popular annual summertime event featuring canoe rides and watershed education.

Bergman and Salinas were Senior Artists-in-Residence at the University of Washington 2013–2017, professors and chair at the Pacific Northwest College of Art 2013–2022. Bergman was professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts 2007–2013.

*The Learning Corridor is 224 Shelton Ave, New Haven, CT (Between Hazel and Starr sts.)