Artist Talk with Kei Ito + Andrew Paul Keiper

Please join ArtYard for an artist talk and participatory event with artists Kei Ito and Andrew Paul Keiper whose installation, This Place is a Message, is currently on view in the yard of our 50 Trenton Residency. Ito and Keiper have created an installation about the necessity of remembering, even as time corrodes our grasp on the past. Ito, whose grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Keiper, whose grandfather worked as an engineer on the Manhattan Project, collaborate on artwork about their shared heritage, seeking to heal the generational trauma wrought by the bombing, and to insist on the urgency of the current nuclear threat.

This event will occur on the 76th anniversary of the Trinity Test, the world’s first atomic explosion engineered by the Manhattan Project on July 16th, 1945. The artists will discuss the relevance of this date to the installation, their creative and collaborative process and then invite the audience to join them in completing the work by placing 108 rusted steel squares atop the concrete cubes, to acknowledge the shared responsibility we all bear for the future in the hopes that what was started 76 years ago at the Trinity Test never happens again.

This event will take place outside on the site of the installation in the backyard of ArtYard’s 50 Trenton Residency accessible only via the towpath. Please head south down the towpath from ArtYard’s building at 13 Front Street and follow signs to the installation.

In the case of inclement weather, this event will be held inside of ArtYard’s theater lobby located at 13 Front Street, Frenchtown, NJ.