Since its inauguration, Queens International has been an initiative not just of its curators, but of the entire Museum in its shared commitment to connecting to the artists and residents of our borough. QI 2018 could not have been realized without the dedication and imagination of many. It would be impossible to enumerate the many ways large and small that the staff of the Museum and Queens Library, as well as our extended community of colleagues, have made integral contributions to an exhibition that marks several firsts while upholding core traditions. Here, on this unbound document, the curators offer a few words of thanks. |
We would like to extend our thanks to Director of Exhibitions and Curator Hitomi Iwasaki, who first told Sophia that she would be organizing Queens International 2018 in mid-2016. Delivered in her characteristically playful style, from the curator who had organized or co-organized four of the seven prior iterations, it felt a little bit like a challenge (gladly accepted). Her support along with that of former Executive Director Laura Raicovich allowed for early musings to germinate. Later that year, Curator Larissa Harris had the idea the that the exhibition should take over the whole museum for the first time since its renovation. While thrilling–the possibility of more space meant larger platforms for artists—it was also daunting, a greater challenge. "We'll help you," she said, and she has. In the close-knit space of the Queens Museum she, together with Hitomi, became a constant sounding board, whether in casually recounting their unrelated but priceless decades-long experience as working curators and thinkers, or through catalogs for the Internationals they organized, or later helping to solidify Baseera as co-curator. By Spring of 2017, when Sophia approached Deputy Director Debra Wimpfheimer with what she thought might be a farfetched idea–that QI 2018 should comprise a partnership with the Queens Library system, including installations in branches and programming, it was met with resounding excitement. While our colleagues in education had been partnering with Queens Library consistently for many years, staff at Queens Library had just days prior expressed an interest in partnerships with the curatorial department to feature exhibitions in their branches. The core team of Queens Library's Adult Services and Cultural Programs, Nayelli Valencia Turrent, Doris Jones, and Karen M. Vermut, then ushered Sophia through two very long days of site visits to branches that they believed would benefit from such an intervention. We are very grateful to Tania Marinos who, working with Sophia as a library engagement liaison, was critical in developing an understanding of each potential branch and its communities, and in helping to facilitate artist conversations with the library managers including Nelson Lu, Yang Zeng, Greg Ghao and their dedicated and engaged staff members. Several other individuals were consulted as part of curatorial and artistic research processes, including Queens Museum Registrar and Archives Manager Louise Weinberg, Queens Library Chief Librarian Nick Buron, Queens Library Central Library Assistant Manager of Collection Development Jillian Hayes, Jake Meginsky, and Sara Workneh. Lindsy Parrott and Morgan Albahary of The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass generously engaged in a conversation about our mutually developing exhibitions and the ways in which links could be fostered among them through a poetic consideration of perception and light. We also thank Yixin Gong, Spring 2018 Intern for his work in organizing curatorial materials during the research and selection process. Additionally, the development of this exhibition was deeply enriched by reflections on the history of the Queens International from its progenitors, former Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl and former Director of Exhibitions Valerie Smith, as well as ruminations on the notion of Internationals with Ingrid Schaffner, Liz Park, and Ashley McNelis, the team for 57th Carnegie International, for their forthcoming catalog published with Dancing Foxes Press. We are tremendously indebted to Queens Museum Exhibition Production Manager John Wanzel. It cannot be overstated that his ingenuity and tendency to always ask the most important "two questions" were indispensible to the exhibition design and to the successful realization of new commissions and site-specific artworks. We are also grateful to the many skilled and dedicated art handlers and Queens Museum Exhibition Production Fellow Samantha Wood, who worked under John's guidance for over seven weeks to prepare and install the galleries, and to Fall 2018 Interns Emilee Graverson and Teresa Wang for coming on board at the height of installation and making essential contributions. The exhibition is significantly enriched by both the Queens International 2018: Volumes catalogue, designed by Bryce Wilner, and the exhibition website, developed by artist Ryan Kuo with research support and motion graphics from Taekeun Kim. Both are the product of thoughtful and rewarding collaboration with supremely talented individuals. We extend thanks to John for preparing his 3D exhibition model for the latter, and to Summer 2018 Intern Manion Kuhn for offering crucial support in the planning and development stages. Larissa has not only acted as an incredibly astute co-editor for the book and website, but also helped to oversee the development of exhibition didactics with the remarkable support of Queens Museum Interpretation Fellow Amy Raffel. Their rigor and enthusiasm are unmatched. We also thank Queens Museum Arttable Fellow Philomena Lopez for her help with research for didactics and Kevin Cadena and Lina Mohammed for their care in designing these materials. At the time of this writing, our unwavering Queens Museum Assistant Curator for Public Programs Lindsey Berfond with assistance from Queens Museum Public Programs Coordinator Catherine Grau, Mellon Curatorial Fellow Rachel Valinsky Queens Museum and Interim Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement Adrianne Koteen, is leading the organization of an ambitious suite of exhibition-related programs at the museum. All are also supporting program development in over 40 Queens Library branches with Queens Library's Adult Services and Cultural Programs team. Special thanks are also due to Lindsey and QI 2018 artist Essye Klempner for facilitating the Volumes Cyanotype. After much testing and coordination, we developed a way to use the sun pouring through museum's skylight to document the first coming-together of QI 2018 artists and collaborators for a pre-installation dinner, expertly catered by Chef Quentin Glabus (Frog Lake Cree First Nations). The tablecloth for that dinner became a banner-print, with contributions from everyone. We have been overwhelmed by the trust and vision of the 45 individuals participating in the Queens International, and are profoundly honored to offer a platform for their perspectives in this great lineage of Queens-based artistic production. Sophia Marisa Lucas and Baseera Khan September 2018 |
Queens International began in 2002, as a means for an incoming Director Tom Finkelpearl and a new-ish Director of Exhibitions Valerie Smith to engage with the artists community of Queens in one major show. It was an excuse to drive around the borough, discovering new people, places and ideas unique to our part of New York, and to many parts of the globe. I too was a new employee of the Queens Museum then, thrilled by the prospect of a Queens-based biennial representing the vibrancy and plurality of the borough. Remaining with me now, sixteen years and eight biennials later, are indelible memories of each and the legacy of the hundreds of artists who have exhibited here. Not only has the exhibition been simultaneously local and international—a theme that took shape from the very beginning—but it has reflected a deep understanding of the reality of contemporary Queens for the last decade. Biennials play many roles, and our "local-international" one may be unique. Subsequent editions in 2004, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2013, and 2016 were all based on an open call, many solicitations, and many studio visits. 2018 returns to the classic form of taking over the entire building, which hasn't happened since 2009. Uniquely, however, this International partners with the Queens Library. Tom first started talking with that remarkable organization in 2008, hoping that as part of the impending renovation and expansion of Queens Museum we could eventually host a branch of this much-admired organization. When Queens Museum assistant curator Sophia Marisa Lucas came to me with the idea to partner with Queens Library for QI 2018, this partnership was part of the backdrop of her thinking. As a combination of historic site, community center, and contemporary art venue, Queens Museum sometimes envies the straightforward role of the library. But the straightforwardness is not to be taken for granted in the age of the Internet. In fact, libraries' roles are changing as rapidly as that of the museum. It is this question that Sophia and her co-curator, artist Baseera Khan, and the many wonderful artists they have brought together are pursuing, along with so many others: What is the role of knowledge, and of access to it, today? How do the museum and the library play different and complementary roles in an algorithmic age? How do identities and systems free and constrain us? The partnership between Queens International: 2018: Volumes and Queens Library will unfold over the course of the exhibition, through public programs, artists workshops, and film screenings at branches throughout the system. The three lucky artists who install their works in Flushing, Central, and LeFrak City branches will get a special glimpse of how audiences encounter art as part of their everyday pursuits. In the way that libraries provide markers on an unknown journey, so too may an artwork displayed there offer audiences a respite, a window, or a guide. Identity—which has always been a special topic of interest in Queens International, as so many people in this borough are grappling with change, combination, translation, distance and closeness to tradition, history and family—has now become all the more potent and topical, and is changing more rapidly than ever due to the revolution in technology and the way we communicate. I am so delighted to welcome visitors to learn more about the cutting edge of who we are and can be, with artists who are more than ever conscious of the way that race and identity, science and technology, and globalization shape our lives. This iteration of QI has so many of the distinctive characteristics of its predecessors, yet takes us boldly into the present. It may be said to begin with its artist-designed website that tours us through the exhibition and highlights its diverse roster of artists. It's local and international certainly, including artists from more than 15 neighborhoods, but it also reaches into spaces throughout the museum and to library communities throughout the borough. It's inter-organizational—through the sharing of resources and synergies with our Queens Library partner. It's inter-active—offering opportunities at every turn to share and reflect on the work and ourselves. And it's inter-generational and inter-International, featuring artists ranging from their 20s to their 70s, some of whom were in previous Internationals. Exhibitions of this scope and scale are not possible without, quite simply, a good idea. Sophia's brilliant proposal for Queens International 2018: Volumes was followed in kind by an unprecedented number of artist entries, interested funders, and the tireless efforts of staff and partners. We are so grateful for the collaborative spirit of all who helped us to realize this exhibition including the Queens Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, Agnes Gund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and of course the artists who have helped to bring this new iteration of the biennial to life. Debra Wimpfheimer Interim Director, Queens Museum |
Closed February 24, 2019 | ||
Since its inauguration in 2002, Queens International has highlighted the contemporary cultural production of Queens in a single major group exhibition approximately every two years. Queens International 2018: Volumes forms a dialog among forty-three Queens-connected artists representing 15 neighborhoods and several generations, including, for the first time, artists who have exhibited in earlier Internationals. In 2018, also for the first time, Queens International includes a partnership with the Queens Library. The subtitle Volumes encompasses many historical and current meanings of the word. Artists respond to the entire museum and select Queens Library branches, questioning and expanding systems of knowledge production and their effects on how we become and order who we are. What aspects of the past are constructed within and because of libraries and museums? What limits and possibilities do they present spatially, temporally, and virtually, today? Artists in QI 2018 are working through abstraction, chance operations, the transformation of found materials, and the construction of new archives along with other strategies to pose profound and multiple questions about centuries- or decades- old human systems, algorithmically-generated realities, and possibilities for selfhood. While Volumes marks an expansive presence in both the Queens Museum and Queens Library branches, its interventions are largely non-monumental, positioned rather for speculation and dialog with these sites, its publics, and beyond. Together, they form a complex array of contemporary artistic thought and conversation with which the visitor is invited to engage. |
Exhibition | |
Damali Abrams, Haley Bueschlen, Gabo Camnitzer, Emmy Catedral, Camel Collective (Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats), U. Kanad Chakrabarti, Jesse Chun, Oscar Rene Cornejo, Chris Domenick, Brian Droitcour and Christine Wong Yap, ray ferreira, Christina Freeman, Milford Graves, Janet Henry, Kim Hoeckele, Camille Hoffman, Heidi Howard and Liz Phillips, Qiren Hu, Juan Iribarren, Paolo Javier and David Mason, Peter Kaspar, Patrick Killoran, Ernesto Klar, Essye Klempner, Mo Kong, Ani Liu, Umber Majeed, Emilio Martinez Poppe, Gloria Maximo, Asif Mian, Wardell Milan, Beatrice Modisett, Arthur Ou, KT Pe Benito, Gabriela Salazar, Raycaster (Ziv Schneider and ~shirin anlen), Jaret Vadera, Mary A. Valverde, Cullen Washington Jr., Jack Whitten | ||
Both the Queens International 2018: Volumes catalogue, designed by Bryce Wilner, and the exhibition website, developed by artist Ryan Kuo with research support and motion graphics from Taekeun Kim, consider applications of the term "volumes" in relation to their respective media as a means to illuminate the disjuncture between systems and embodied experience. Both contain short interviews with contributing artists, who the curators asked to describe processes leading up to their work in the show; what a viewer might not see immediately in the work; and overall feelings toward "volumes" as a concept. Text co-developed by the curators and edited by Queens Museum Curator and publications co-editor Larissa Harris is also included. This website adapts materials used internally for the process of planning the show, including architectural floor plans of the Queens Museum and the 3D exhibition model of Volumes developed by Queens Museum Exhibition Production Manager John Wanzel. The resulting site creates an alternative experience of Volumes by organizing the digital realm's approximation of 3D space on a 2D plane (the table). The website officially launched in July 2018, offering a "preview" of QI 2018, and continued to grow alongside the exhibition until November 2018. |
Acknowledgements | Taking "volumes" as a cue, the website grid attempts to flatten the voices and bodies in QI 2018 onto a universal screen. This is a failure by design. The computer tirelessly garbles the text while fragments of the museum architecture and virtual walkthroughs of the galleries give form to truths, half-truths, and algorithmic untruths about the promises of a biennial. The HTML table beneath the grid is an extension of my web project Tables of Content, which examined containment and white space in online publishing, and is deployed here in the spirit of organizing and indexing material. The artistic aim of the website is to depict an entity, like a museum biennial, that merges art and logistics. To create the Volumes logo, I simulated a digital volume hitting a wall in a game engine. There was no design process. Instead, the collision was improvised during a curatorial meeting and drawn in real-time as the computer traced the movement of my mouse. Like this website, the logo is a record of an event whose many layers emerge gradually, if at all. —Ryan Kuo |
Taking "volumes" as a cue, the website grid attempts to flatten the voices and bodies in QI 2018 onto a universal screen. This is a failure by design. The computer tirelessly garbles the text while fragments of the museum architecture and virtual walkthroughs of the galleries give form to truths, half-truths, and algorithmic untruths about the promises of a biennial. The HTML table beneath the grid is an extension of my web project Tables of Content, which examined containment and white space in online publishing, and is deployed here in the spirit of organizing and indexing material. The artistic aim of the website is to depict an entity, like a museum biennial, that merges art and logistics. To create the Volumes logo, I simulated a digital volume hitting a wall in a game engine. There was no design process. Instead, the collision was improvised during a curatorial meeting and drawn in real-time as the computer traced the movement of my mouse. Like this website, the logo is a record of an event whose many layers emerge gradually, if at all. —Ryan Kuo |
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In a similar vein, the publication addresses and exploits the inherently volumetric architecture of bookmaking in order to allow readers to navigate it in multiple and idiosyncratic ways—the way that one might wander through the open, nonlinear floor plan of the Queens Museum, or move from section to section in a library, encountering the unexpected along the way. The publication comprises content developed for the website, and its launch was timed with the opening of the QI 2018 installations at Queens Library branches in November 2018. | This catalogue, a volume in at least two senses of the word, uses the space of the press sheet to evenly, separately distribute text and image throughout its pages. Each of the eight press sheets has been printed such that all of the full-color photograph pages occupy one side of the press sheet, and all of the black text pages occupy the reverse. Text and image come together only after the sheets have been folded down, trimmed, and bound. As the texts are organized alphabetically by name and the photographs are arranged to resemble a gallery walkthrough, the reader reads twice. —Bryce Wilner | This catalogue, a volume in at least two senses of the word, uses the space of the press sheet to evenly, separately distribute text and image throughout its pages. Each of the eight press sheets has been printed such that all of the full-color photograph pages occupy one side of the press sheet, and all of the black text pages occupy the reverse. Text and image come together only after the sheets have been folded down, trimmed, and bound. As the texts are organized alphabetically by name and the photographs are arranged to resemble a gallery walkthrough, the reader reads twice. —Bryce Wilner |
QI 2018: Volumes is organized by Queens Museum Assistant Curator Sophia Marisa Lucas with New York-based performance artist Baseera Khan, working closely with Queens Museum Exhibition Production Manager John Wanzel, and additional collaborators at the Queens Museum and Queens Library. The exhibition website and web-based catalogue accompanying QI 2018 is co-edited by Queens Museum Curator Larissa Harris, with design concept and development by Queens-based artist Ryan Kuo. Queens Museum is dedicated to presenting the highest quality visual arts and educational programming for people in the New York metropolitan area, and particularly for the uniquely international residents of Queens. In November 2013, the Queens Museum completed an expansion that doubled its size to 105,000 square feet. The expansion provides an additional 50,000 square feet of space, including a suite of new galleries, artist studios, flexible public and special event spaces, education classrooms, a café, back-of-house facilities and visitor amenities. This light-filled new space, designed by Grimshaw Architects, exemplifies the Museum's commitment to openness, inclusion, community partnership and the diverse communities of New York City. A second phase of the project will bring a branch of the Queens Library into the Queens Museum. Queens Library's mission is to meet the needs of the community by offering lifelong learning opportunities and ensuring there is a positive impact in the community. Queens Library fulfills its goals by embracing innovation and change. With a history of offering pioneering programs that meet the diverse needs of the most diverse county in the US. The Queens Library serves 2.3 million people from 65 locations. It circulates among the highest numbers of books and other library materials in the country. |
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Foreword | QI 2018 is made possible in part by support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Agnes Gund, and the American Chai Trust. Exhibitions at the Queens Museum receive significant support from Ford Foundation. Major funding for the Queens Museum is generously provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Lambent Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, and the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc. |
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