Camille Hoffman and Asif Mian will present new work at the Queens International 2018: Volumes.
QI 2018 artists represent a dialog among Queens-connected producers of several generations, including for the first time artists who have exhibited in earlier Internationals. The artists’ works respond to sites throughout the entire museum and select Queens Library branches. They question and expand systems of knowledge production using both analog and digital strategies. They rethink histories and policies through embodied experience, redemptive archives, subjective abstractions, and intangible architectures. Via these methods, they explore the potential for a nonlinear progression of time and correspondingly, a fluid approach to space.
Camille Hoffman will present work in the Watershed Gallery.
“In April 2018, I had the privilege of speaking with Two Clouds, a Ramapough Lenape tribal member and full-time water protector at Split Rock Sweetwater Prayer Camp in New Jersey. Preserving the language, religion, and history of his tribe, Two Clouds is especially focused on indigenous rights while actively fighting against the Pilgrim Pipelinethat threatens New York and New Jersey waters. Our insightful and ongoing exchange around water as it pertains to deep cultural traditions, ancestral trade routes, and long-standing colonial violence on this land has prompted me to critically reexamine my own personal interconnection with water, consumption and transoceanic identity. Drawing from our conversations and responding to the Queens Museum’s 1939 World's Fair relief model of the New York City water supply system, I researched the colonial symbols pertaining to water and commerce emphasized in the New York state seal, ultimately reformulating them with my own found materials.”
Asif Mian will present new work in Skylight Gallery.
“I have been working with surveillance imagery and video since I was teenager. This started with collecting images of events and "portraits" from CCTV footage on the web. I was always drawn to its institutional method of raw capture—high angle, pixelated, and inherently disposable. I made many drawings based on these images, employing the same high-angle, isometric perspective. The attraction extended to making films using black-and-white pinhole surveillance cameras, remote-controlled CCTV cameras, and night vision cameras. An attraction to thermal (IR) cameras was inevitable.”