36 THE QUEENS COURIER • BUZZ • AUGUST 20, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
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JCAL selects 15 artists for yearlong series
BY JASMINE PALMA
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
Th e Jamaica Center for Arts and
Learning announced its selection of artists
for the center’s fi ft h iteration of “Jamaica
Flux: Workspaces and Windows.”
Th e triennial yearlong project, fi rst initiated
in 2004, is a curatorial, researchbased,
interdisciplinary, site-specific
endeavor made in collaboration with
locals and stakeholders based in southeast
Queens.
Jamaica Flux 2021 will delve into
Jamaica’s history, culture, diversity and
economic development to conceive projects
mindful of current events and ongoing
national conversations.
Scholars, artists, politicians, local residents,
community leaders, curators and
developers will cooperate to “catalyze
the transformative power of the visual
arts, generating creative responses to
the anxieties and tensions of our present
moment,” according to a spokesperson of
the center.
Th e curatorial team, in conjunction
with a committee of New York art professionals
and community leaders, chose
from a pool of submitted works a collection
of 15 artists and artist groups, prioritizing
new or under-recognized individuals
with artistic excellence and those that
mirror local demographics or have links
with southeast Queens.
According to the center, the group is
mostly composed of artists of color.
Artists are tasked with conducting
research and building collaborative community
relationships while developing
their projects along the course of the year.
Th eir artwork will be displayed along
Jamaica Avenue in the summer of 2021.
See a full list of artists below, as
described by the Jamaica Center for the
Arts and Learning.
Damali Abrams pursues a futurism
largely sourced from the Guyanese diaspora,
Afro-Caribbean folklore and religious
practice, while combining found
materials from popular culture. Th e artist
will research the oral histories of culture
makers in Jamaica to create a series
of collage portraits based on recorded
interviews with local artists and business
owners, supported by additional materials
from the Queens Central Library.
Heejung Cho will create a large-scale,
perspectival urban landscape print depicting
Jamaica’s diverse ecosystem, collaged
from multicolored woodblock prints.
As a Korean immigrant, the integration
and friction between boundaries, places,
people and cultures are the essence of
what Cho aims to capture in her practice,
which further explores notions of identity,
memory and home.
Indranil Choudhury works with video
and sound to consider how urban communities
respond to technological and
economic change. His practice refl ects
on the idiosyncrasies of late capitalism,
such as large diasporas, obsession with
speculative technologies, and the stress
of urban life. Choudhury will collaborate
with small businesses in Jamaica that cater
specifi cally to immigrant communities,
and create an experimental sound work.
Artist group Cody + Julian prioritizes
engagement and representation of communities
vulnerable to economic and ecological
displacement. Th eir project, “Th e
Peoples Communication Commission
(PCC),” will create media and installations
that repurpose the tactics of advertising
campaigns to empower the general
public to speak to those in power.
Th e resulting work will include guerrilla
advertising, interventions and design
workshops based on collaborations with
residents, businesses, civic organizations
and commuters.
Sherese Francis excavates various etymologies,
histories and myths in the
search for community stories that have
been buried due to misinformation, stereotypes,
cultural amnesia and social
oppressions. Th e southeast Queens-based
poet and artist recycles found materials to
create a unique, sacred and collective text.
For her project “Art/I/Fact,” Francis will
research collective memory in Jamaica
by hosting a series of participatory public
workshops to create 2-D and 3-D time
capsule-like assemblages.
Linda Ganjian engages local architectural
history as experienced through its
residents. Her project, “Postcards from
Jamaica,” will combine quotes and personal
histories with drawings of signifi -
cant neighborhood sites, as well as quotidian
architecture that is vulnerable to redevelopment
in an era of massive rezoning
and change. Th rough community interviews
that discuss memories of favorite
buildings and sites, the artist will create a
series of free, publicly available postcards.
Hayoon Jay Lee pushes the boundaries
of “otherness” through public performance
and video. Lee will host an intercultural
dinner, with conversation on topics
regarding local food culture, socioeconomic
factors in relation to habits of
consumption and food security. Research
conducted at community organizations,
such as women’s centers and soup kitchens,
will further inform Lee’s “Rice Lab”
installation, which traces the global history
of rice.
Le’Andra LeSeur explores healing within
absence and gestural language created
through repetitive actions. As a Black
queer woman, visual and sonic fragments
become transcending elements that connect
identities aff ected by systems of
oppression. LeSeur’s project, “Th ere is
Only Language Between Us,” will host a
community spoken-word and stream-ofconsciousness
writing workshop to compose
a fi nal sound installation.
Reuben Lorch-Miller interconnects his
art practice and teaching experience as
an educator working in District 29 public
schools. Taking on the role of artistas
facilitator, Lorch-Miller will collaborate
with elementary school teachers and
students, and community elders, to create
and select a series of neighborhood fl ag
designs for Jamaica, Queens. Th e selected
designs will be produced as full-scale fl ags
to be fl own along the pedestrian plaza of
the 165th Street Mall.
Firoz Mahmud delves into the histories
of “Ship Jumpers” or “Tarzan Visa
migrants”: refugees from Bengal and
South Asia who traverse high-risk geopolitical
borders, most of whom settled as
immigrants throughout Queens, including
Jamaica. As part of the Queens-based
artist’s long-term practice focused on
migrants, refugees and displaced people,
“Migrational Infl ux: Promised Land” will
research and collaborate with immigrant
community members to create a series
of multimedia works celebrating Bengali
legacies, traditions and subcultures.
Nadia Misir refl ects on relationships
between diaspora, gentrifi cation, grief,
Guyanese identity and the way that histories
of oppression reveal themselves in
unexpected and mundane moments. Th e
Queens-based artist will host public programming
and collaborate with local residents
to create a ’zine that radically retells
the history of Jamaica as a neighborhood,
as well as a photographic chapbook of
lyric essays that speak directly to urban
planning documents, such as the Jamaica
Now Action Plan.
Sari Nordman will develop “Tower,”
a collaboratively engineered structure
that refl ects on the importance of understanding
diff erent cultural experiences
and immigration when fi ghting climate
change. Nordman will record and translate
multilingual interviews to appear in
videos projected on the installation. As
a dance teaching artist for NYC public
schools, Nordman will look for school
partnerships to conduct climate-change
workshops and gather calls for action
from students, which will further become
a part of the project’s virtual and physical
archives.
Jessica Segall uses bureaucracy as a
sculpting material, unpacking ideas of
environmental conservation and belonging
through her interspecies and site-specifi
c practice. Alongside educational programming,
the artist will discuss housing,
urban and ecological health by co-creating
platforms for osprey birds in Jamaica
Bay, whose original habitat was clear-cut
for housing development. In collaboration
with local organizations, Segall will
install a remote camera to produce a publicly
viewable live video feed of osprey
nests built on the platform.
Misra Walker examines and research
materials that stem from the Black and
Brown working-class material conditions
to address local struggle, global solidarity
and liberation from capitalism. Th e
Bronx-based artist’s project “You can’t
sit with us working title” will create a
series of public domino tables that refl ect
and are specifi c to the Jamaica, Queens,
community to hold on to culture and
resist against the erasure and displacement
caused by development/gentrifi cation.
Community members will be invited
to participate in political/popular education/
discussions and a domino tournament.
Anne Wu creates sculptures that reconstruct
architectural thresholds and vernacular
landscapes to contemplate diasporic
histories and communal identity.
Wu’s project will take the 165th Street
Pedestrian Mall as a site of departure —
the Flushing-based artist will enter each
store between Jamaica Avenue and 89th
Avenue and conduct interviews with store
owners and employees. With collective
input, Wu will select one item in every
location to cast, resulting in a sculptural
archive of cast objects and a photographic
and narrative inventory of the mall’s economic
microcosm.
File photo courtesy of JCAL
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