QMAil: September 2006

Jump to: |EVENTS| 

What better way to usher a new month, than with a bit of verse. I think a taste of Julia Ward Howe's The Summons, does the trick at this time of year: "I expect you in September, with the glory of the year, you shall make the Autumn precious and the death of Summer dear." Perhaps a little bit melodramatic, but when you consider that, like summer, our current exhibitions, will be coming to an end on the 17th, the tone might just be appropriate. But then again, we'll help you make autumn precious with Queens International 2006: Everything All at Once, our biennial survey of the artists living and/or working in the borough, with an opening bash on Sunday, October 8, at 3 pm. More on that next month. For those of you who haven't been able to enjoy ABCDF: Portraits of Mexico City, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: Habitat 7, Propia Vision/Our Vision, or the artists projects by Carlos Amorales, Graciela Fuentes, Diego Medina or Dulce Pinzon, I urge you to take advantage of the final weeks. You will not be disappointed. On the public programming side, there are two provocative cinematic offerings; a September 13 screenign and discussion on the deepening crisis in Darfur, and the September 17 kick-off of a new season of Cinemarosa: Queens Only Queer Film Series. Enjoy the back to school sales, hassles and excitement, and I hope to see you at the museum some time soon.

September masthead: Dulce Pinzón, Alfonso Lopez (Taino, Spanish) (detail), from the series "Multiracial", 2002/3. Color print on paper, 16 x 20 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Propia Visión/Our Vision

Final weeks! — Closing September 17

Propia Visión highlights the work of nineteen participating photographers, who responded to an open call to collaborate in this ground-breaking exhibition. As the title suggests, Propia Visión focuses on what they, as Mexican photographers who have lived and worked in New York, experience in their daily lives.

Immigrant artists must transform themselves, taking on a range of jobs for their economic survival and cultural development. The nostalgia for what was left behind can be quite painful and the road to the future is sometimes hard to imagine. It is this process of transformation which is captured and exposed through images and collective undertakings like Propia Visión.

Featured artists: Martirene Alcántara, Eugenia Arias, Mónica Aspe, Brenda Campos, Marga Carmona-Carriedo, Alejandro Esquiliano, Mayra García, Mary Teresa Giancoli, Enrique González Ibarra, Pedro Lasch, Ángel E. López, Israel Lucas, Edgar Márquez, Gabriela Mendoza, Julio Ortega, Cristian Peña, Paulina Perera-Riveroll, Elvis Sol’s, Javier Soriano. Propia Visión is curated by Enrique González Ibarra.

The initial installation of Propia Visión was organized by Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders as part of Immigrant History Week 2006 and was exhibited at The International Center in New York.

Martirene Alcantara, La Doliente (The Mourner), Cibachrome, 16 x 11 in.

More information is available here.

Artists' Projects

Final weeks! — Closing September 17

Carlos Amorales - Solitario

Solitario, 1998. DVD and mini DV master, color, sound, 14:12 min. Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert New York.

Solitario portrays a group of girls and boys playing on the ring after a wrestling match has finished. As they mimic their wrestling idols, they battle chaotically one against another. Meanwhile the action slowly progresses and following an adult voice we hear a chorus of children shouting "Solitario," the name of a well-known professional Mexican wrestler, and also the Spanish word for "solitary." The juxtaposition of the chanting of this word with the dynamics of the children suggests a latent meaning in the piece. Solitario highlights the irony of the forlorn feeling that frequently arises in an individual despite-or because of-a crowded and energetic environment.

More information is available here.

Graciela Fuentes - Saida

Saida, 2005. Single-channel video, color, silent, 2:21 min.

Saida offers a reflection on the construction of subjectivity through performative acts. It focuses on a young girl dancing during a family event in Egypt. Employing a formal strategy of visual isolation her body language becomes accentuated, revealing the fluidity between self-awareness and self-absorption. In her performance, Saida appears to traverse the threshold between childhood and womanhood, awkwardly alternating from adult-like seductive gestures to childish jostling. By concentrating on the singularities of her movements, the work transcends its cultural specificity to question notions of girlhood, sexuality and identity formation.

More information is available here.

Diego Medina - Don't Let Money Rule Over Art

Don't Let Money Rule Over Art, 2006. Site-specific installation, pine, wenge, and zebra woods, digital prints, and texts. Courtesy of the artist.

“This piece is about the real reasons for art and making art; I think creativity should not be limited. I think of the struggle of artists to produce art with a minimum amount of money. I think of the importance of creativity not only in art but in daily life and the answers we find for every situation in life.”

More information is available here.

Dulce Pinzon - The Real Story of the Superheroes and Multiracial

The Real Story of the Superheroes, 2004/2005. 13 C-prints mounted on cintra. Courtesy of the artist.

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of a hero who has gone largely unrecognized. Mexican workers in New York commonly work excessive hours in extreme conditions for very low wages. The hard-earned money is saved at great sacrifice to be sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.

While the Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US, the US economy has also grown dependent on such an inexpensive labor force of immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is this dependence that makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

The Superheroes series pays homage to these brave and determined men and women who somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand severe conditions of life in the U.S. in order to help their families and communities. They are the true superheroes.

This project consists of 16 color portraits of people of mixed ethnic origin in front of primary color backgrounds. The images challenge the concept of race by highlighting the disparity between the stark natural boundaries between the primary colors, and the ambiguous and artificial, yet commonly accepted boundaries between the different races. This project asks the viewer to question the existence of race in nature.

These portraits strip our idea of race down to its elements. It is in this nakedness that the viewer witnesses the template of racial distinction literally dissolves in front of their face. The tone is neither confrontational nor ironic, but rather unassuming in its directness and intimacy that allow the viewer to confront this disparity without sacrificing the humanity of the subjects.

More information is available here.

ABCDF: Portraits of Mexico City

Final weeks! — Closing September 17

As the third-largest city in the world, Mexico City and its 22 million inhabitants are exposed to an infinite amount of stimuli that encourages a free and playful interaction of imagery unique to this sprawling locale. ABCDF: Portraits of Mexico City features some 165 photographs, video pieces, prints, engravings, animations, short films and objects capturing the true experience of living in this energetic and enigmatic metropolis. Arranged alphabetically, ABCDF literally provides the ABCs of Mexico City, or Distrito Federal, from abasto (supply), represented by Nestor Quiñones' photomural (measuring 12' x 22') of mountains of the empty produce crates that supply the city, to Zoom, a series of six satellite images that capture the urban sprawl. What lies in between is a journey through the wonderfully enchanting, the less-than-desirable, the tragic and completely joyous, all combining to create the first in-depth survey of daily life in the largest city in North America. Features work by Francis Alys, Miguel Calderon, Ximena Cuevas, Silvia Gruner, Gabriel Kuri, Yoshua Okon, Daniela Rossell, Sabastian Romo, Pedro Reyes and Daniel Guzman and others.

Manon Amen, Boing, 2000. Color print on paper, 31 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches.

ABCDF: Portraits of Mexico City at the Queens Museum of Art has been made possible by the generous support of: CONACULTA: Mexico's National Council for Culture and Arts. Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust, Control Bureau, Fundacion Televisa, SRE: Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affiars, The Mex-Am Cultural Foundation, Inc., The Consulate General of Mexico in New York, Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, Cuervo Tradicional, Mexicana Airlines, Tortilleria Chinantla, Dasein Foundation, Jarritos, Corona, Villacero Group, and Vitro.

More information about ABCDF: Portraits of Mexico City is available here.

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: Habitat 7

Final weeks! — Closing September 17

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, 46th Street, Sunnyside, 2005. Duratran, 20 x 48 inches

For millennia, civilizations have laid their roots along the fertile banks of major rivers to reap the rich natural resources. From the Nile to the Amazon and Yangtze, the river basins have become the birthplaces of new cultures and societies. Today it is the manmade arteries that serve as the spines of new communities and none in New York has become home to a more diverse system of societies than the culturally rich soils that surround the #7 train. In his first solo museum exhibition, Taiwanese-born, Queens-based photographer and winner of the 2nd Annual New York Times Magazine “Capture the Times” Photography Competition, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, examines the various enclaves that exist on the route between Times Square and Flushing. Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: Habitat 7 features 30 of Liao's large-scale panoramic images - some measuring 8 feet in width - printed on Duratrans and installed in lightboxes surrounding the QMA's historic Panorama of the City of New York, inviting not only a reconsideration of the ways in which modern societies evolve around the river basins of today, but also the deep breadth and depth of the communities that have developed along a single subway line.

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: Habitat 7 has been made possible by the generous support of the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan, R.O.C. in collaboration with the Taipei Cultural Center, TECO in New York, JGS, Inc. and Crystal Foundation.

More information is available here.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Darfur: Deepening Crisis, Opportunities for Action

Wednesday, Sept 13, 6-8 pm

As NYC prepares for the big Sept 17 Save Darfur Rally in Central Park, this Queens discussion and film showing will examine questions about this urgent human rights crisis. What can we do? Faced with almost 300,000 Muslim Africans being killed in Darfur, and 2 million homeless, what is our capacity to learn from history, and to take effective action together?

Many Queens immigrant communities carry memories of similar terrible moments in their own history; the Holocaust, the Rwanda Genocide, the Cambodian, Armenian, Irish, African American, and Native American tragedies, the enormous mass killings at the creation of India and Pakistan, and the current conflicts around the world that affect us all. As New Yorkers we have almost all been immigants, sharing the heritage of oppression, carry the baggage of trauma. Muslim, Jewish, African, American – we Humans all must learn to work together. Starting at 6 pm, with a 15 minute film produced by the Save Darfur Coalition, an interesting panel of international and local Human Rights activists will speak, with appearances by some local leaders, with Darfurians and other African activists. Audience participation is welcome!

More information on Darfur is available here.

CINEMAROSA - queens only queer film series – New York Queer Filmmakers Showcase

Sunday, September 17, 3-6 pm

Queens' first and only film-video series dedicated to present independent fiction, documentary, and experimental works focused on the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) peoples and communities will begin its Fall 2006 Independent Free Screenings with the presentation of works produced and directed by local filmmakers.

The selection includes: HUSTLER WP, Dir. Craig Cobb (A pair of unlikely buddies living their own queer underground try to score drugs and Deutscher boyfriends in NYC's trendy Chelsea district); AY, MIJO!, Dir. Roberto Espinosa (With the help of a Mexican soap opera, the telenovela "Ana," a father and son learn to understand each other); DARE, Dir. Adam Salky (Shy Ben secretly lusts after unattainable bad boy Johnny, until one night changes everything in their relationship); and THE TRAVELLING EYE OF THE BLUE CAT, Dir. Shawn Atkins (A surreal photo collage animation set in NYC that begins when a girl is awakened by a mysterious bird that crashes into her window).

**Directors will attend the screening and participate in a Q& A panel with the audience. Cocktail reception to follow at the Unisphere Gallery of the Museum.**

Back to the top...