The Queens Museum’s Open A.I.R. Artist Services Program invites you to join award-winning artists Mark Strandquist and Queens-based photographer and educator Sol Aramendi to develop and utilize challenging methods for creating personal, political, and socially powerful photographs. Work alongside a diverse group of youth from Queens as we collaboratively create a series of images. Participants will engage with a diverse array of photographic practices from around the world and will create their own photographic “€˜passport’ of identity and youth rights issues.

This workshop is part of the international initiative the Participatory Playbook, an ongoing series of workshops and exhibitions that works with a wide spectrum of artists and activists to develop a process based and open sourced “€˜playbook’ for anyone to utilize to create socially relevant photography projects in their own communities.

Location: Unisphere Gallery, 2nd Floor

About the Artists
Mark Strandquist is an artist, activist, and educator based in Philadelphia, PA and Richmond, VA. He has spent years using art as a vehicle for connecting incarcerated men, women, and teens together with communities across the country. Since its initial iterations in the fall of 2012, his project Windows From Prison has expanded into interactive exhibits in several states, a national postcard-exchange program, a high school curriculum, and various public installations that have brought thousands of individuals together with prisoners across the country.

Sol Aramendi is a New York based Argentinean artist working in photography and installation. Sol has merged her artistic work with Social Practice. She is the founder of the Project Luz Photography Program for New Immigrants. Using photography as a tool of empowerment, creating a dialogue of understanding, connecting people with communities and their creativity. Her work is currently on view at the Museum of the Americas in Washington DC. She was featured at El Museo del Barrio’s 2011″€³(S) Files,”€ the museum’s sixth biennial of art created by Latino artists living in NY. Sol’s work has been shown widely in New York, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Los Angeles, Tolouse, Barcelona, Madrid, Utrecht, and Split.

About Open A.I.R. Artist Services Program
The expanded Queens Museum features a new, expanded slate of artist services, including a brand new Studio Program, with professional development features and a networking Lecture Series that draws on human resources at the Queens Museum. Open A.I.R. programs will offer professional development topics targeted specifically to all interested emerging artists.
Open A.I.R. is made possible by a generous grant from The Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund. Additional support provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Questions? Email: sjmo@queensmuseum.org