Outdoor art exhibition debuts at Flushing Town Hall
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BY CARLOTTA MOHAMED
When the Southeast Queens
Artists Alliance (SEQAA) was
established five years ago, its
mission was to nurture local
talent and to support cultural
programming by artists who
want to share their work with
people in the community and
beyond.
This month, SEQAA, which
includes a group of visual artists
and writers, debuted its
“Out Front 24/7 Banner Project”
that is installed on Flushing
Town Hall’s garden fence
on Northern Boulevard, and
will be on display until Sept. 3.
The project showcases the
works of 14 Queens-based artists,
which evolved organically
from ideas and sketchbooks the
artists kept during the pandemic
and sometimes shared with
each other over Zoom calls.
“We have always been interested
in doing public work,
especially this year in particular,
since a lot of indoor spaces
and cultural spaces were shut
down during the pandemic,”
said Rejin Leys, an artist, and
one of the co-curators of the
outdoor exhibition.
The original works, reproduced
on weatherproof vinyl
banners, encompass a variety
of styles reflecting the diversity
of contemporary artistic
practice in southeast Queens.
The exhibition captures the
loneliness of the pandemic,
daily rituals created to dispel
the solitude, and a turn toward
nature and transcendence as a
source of comfort.
During its in-person exhibition
walkthrough held on
Wednesday, Aug. 18, SEQAA’s
participating artists reflected
on how they coped during
quarantine while the city was
shut down to curb the spread of
the coronavirus.
According to Leys, for some
artists, it was an opportunity
to regroup and focus on what
was important to them.
“The art world is very career
oriented and to go to a
lot of events and keep up with
what everyone is doing, it was
an opportunity for us to slow
down and focus,”Leys said. “As
artists, we tend to work alone
or work from home much of the
time.”
Leys’ artwork, “Glow/
Emerge” is a digital collage
incorporating text from that
dream book with an imagery
meant to serve as a reminder
that although we were apart,
we were never alone despite
the isolation of the lockdown
period.
“For this banner, I combined
some of the words and
numbers from the dream book
with a butterfly image, which
is kind of a hopeful symbol of
re-emergence and warm colors
that symbolize a sense of optimism
and hope,” Leys said.
Other artists’ works featured
in the exhibition includes
capturing the haunting
emptiness of New York City’s
public tables and benches, an
abstract composition of interior
spaces to reflect the claustrophobia
of staying indoors
for a long time period, and a
painting representing a community
working together.
The outdoor exhibition will
be accessible day and night at
Flushing Town Hall and will
then be moved to the fence
surrounding King Manor Museum
in Jamaica from Sept.
8 to 24. There will be a closing
reception on Sept. 18 from
2 to 3:30 p.m. at King Manor
Museum, located at 150-03
Jamaica Ave.
For more information on
the exhibition, visit seqaa.org.
Reach reporter Carlotta
Mohamed by e-mail at
cmohamed@schnepsmedia.
com or by phone at (718) 260–
4526.
Photo by Jacqueline Herranz-Brooks
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