November 9, 2013 – January 19, 2014
Queens Museum
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens NY 11368
With
the sixth iteration of Queens International, the Queens Museum’s
signature biennial evolves into yet another phase. Taiwan-based Meiya
Cheng, the first non-New York-based curator to participate, joins the
Museum’s Hitomi Iwasaki on an exhibition emphasizing site-specificity as
a collaborative practice between the curators and artists and their
surroundings. As
one of the inaugural exhibitions in the Museum’s expanded space, Queens
International 2013 echoes the institution’s own hyperawareness of its
new environs.
Reaching out to active producers both in and out of the visual arts,
Queens International 2013 is composed of a number of event- and
performance-based projects, including many off-site programs charged
with idiosyncratic and unexpected insights and approaches. 38 artists
and collaboratives stretch ideas and practices of cooperative creativity
in surprising directions and degrees, between and among artists, Museum
staff (beyond the curatorial team), outside organizations and other
specialists. The results transgress the boundaries of disciplines
beyond visual art practices – cinema, community engagement, music,
open-forum discussion, guided touring, architecture, theatre, literature
and food – mashing, matching and revitalizing all for wider
accessibility and larger communication.
From community-based experimental art-sharing programs to specialized
investigations into obscure local vernaculars, to seemingly conventional
photographs and sculptural objects and performances that challenge the
new Museum spaces, Queens International 2013 teems with ambitious
artistries that challenge boundaries of media, methods, and concepts in
current creative productions and museum practices alike. With a guided
fishing trip in search of the invasive snakehead, a Queens/Brooklyn
border walk, a pickling workshop, a Bulgarian women’s a capella choir, a
do-it-yourself/together movie soundtrack performance, an
participatory DJ performance, group drone-building
workshop, paintings exhibited by way of video and live sound
performance, an intercontinental duet concert via Skype, and a
deconstructed theatrical play taking place simultaneously in multiple
locations throughout the Museum spaces, the exhibition both energizes
and escapes from the Museum’s new 105,000 sq. ft. home.
Parameters are further blurred, crossed, and reconsidered by Cheng’s
fresh perspective on the borough of Queens today. Together with Iwasaki,
Cheng has intensely surveyed the local artistic environment, and
infused Queens International 2013 with artistic and socio-cultural
parallels and counterpoints from her native Taiwan to examine how these
distant places – Queens and Taiwan – define themselves and are defined
by each other. To
further explore this dynamic, for the first time, Queens International
includes non-Queens-based artists, in this case a cohort of nine artists
from Taiwan’s contemporary art scene. This
group investigates the possibility of a community as the collective
imagination of “a place” beyond geographical boundaries, societal and
cultural divisions, and global conflicts over labor and capital. Video
pieces address the intertwined themes of border control, cultural
identity, and the ambiguity of language and translation, all issues
germane to ongoing discourse in both contemporary Queens and Taiwan,
while additional commissioned performances and site-related projects
find the artists interpreting the historical and social context of the
Museum and the borough as a whole.
Queens International 2013 participants include:
Nobutaka
Aozaki; Art & The Commons: (David Andersson and Antonio Serna);
Kevin Beasley; Jane Benson; Lynley Bernstein; Alberto Borea; Chang
Chien-Chi; Michelle Marie Charles; Chen Chieh-jen; Chou Yu-Cheng;
Deville Cohen; Bulgarian Collaborative: Joro Boro, Milena Deleva,
Daniela Kostova/Mario Mohan, Vlada Tomova, Tushevs Aerials (Georgi and
Nina Tushev), Meglena Zapreva; Jeff Feld; Flux Factory (Douglas Paulson
and Christina Vassallo); Richard Garet; Wojciech Gilewicz; Joseph
Heathcott; Hsu Chia-Wei; Zeynab Izadyar; Anna K.E.; Theatre 167/ Ari
Laura Kreith; Siobhan Landry; Cheon Pyo Lee; Liu Ho-Jang; Luo Jr-shin;
Alex White Mazzarella; Florian Meisenberg; Ander Mikalson; Nitin Mukul;
Arthur Ou; Queens World Film Festival (Don and Katha Cato); Aida Šehović; Matthew Volz (and Juan Wauters with Carmelle Safdie); Fujui Wang; Kristof Wickman; Jun Yang; Yu Cheng-Ta, and Bryan Zanisnik.
Queens International 2013 is organized by guest curator Meiya Cheng and
Hitomi Iwasaki, the Queens Museum’s Director of Exhibitions.
Queens
International 2013 is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taipei
Cultural Center of TECO in New York, La Guardia Corporation,
Contemporary Art Foundation, Target, and Holosonic Research Labs, Inc. Additional
funding 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.
# # #
The
Queens Museum is a local international art space in Flushing Meadows
Corona Park with contemporary art, events and educational programs
reflecting the diversity of Queens and New York City. The Museum
presents the work of emerging and established artists, changing
exhibitions that speak to contemporary urban issues, and projects that
focus on the rich history of its site. In November 2013, the Museum
opened its new space, a 105,000 square foot venue with a soaring sky lit
atrium, suite of day lit galleries and improved flexible event space. Some
highlights of the Queens Museum after its reopening include the
Panorama of the City of New York, the 9,335 square foot scale model of
the five boroughs, a reinstallation of the Neustadt Collection of
Tiffany Glass, a new visible storage facility for the Museum’s
collection of artifacts from the 1939 and 1964 New York World’s Fairs,
and a new studio wing with nine artists studios. It also features a new
exhibition in partnership with the NYC Department of Environmental
Protection centered on the 1939 World’s Fair WPA model of the watershed
and contemporary conservation efforts and the first show in the Shelley
and Donald Rubin Exhibition Series, Citizens of the World: Cuba in
Queens. The Museum seeks to exact positive change in surrounding
communities through engagement initiatives ranging from the multilingual
outreach and educational opportunities for adult immigrants, to the
residency program, Corona Studio, which embeds artists in the local
community. The Museum also conducts educational outreach tailored toward
schoolchildren, teens, families, seniors as well as those individuals
with physical and mental disabilities.
The Queens Museum is located on property owned in full by the City of
New York, and its operation is made possible in part by public funds
provided though the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The
Museum’s hours are: Wednesday – Sunday: noon - 6 pm.
Admission to the Museum is by suggested donation: $8 for adults, $4 for
seniors, students and children, and free for members and children under
5. For general visitor information, please visit the Museum’s website
or call 718.592.9700.
Media Contacts:
Justin Conner/ FITZ & CO/ +1-212-627-1455 x233/ Justin@fitzandco.com
David Strauss/ Queens Museum/ +1-718-592-9700 x145/ dstrauss@queensmuseum.
No comments:
Post a Comment