Four Affiliates Partake in The Queens Museum’s ‘Year of Uncertainty’

By
Brittany Nguyen
March 12, 2021

The Queens Museum (QM) introduces Year of Uncertainty (YoU), a framework for strengthening connection among the Museum, their communities, and constituents, focused on creating new possibilities for culture, kinship, and mutual support. 

Adjunct Professor Gabo Camnitzer and Alumni Alex Strada ’16 and Tali Keren ’16 are YoU Artists-In-Residence, and Assistant Professor Sable Elyse Smith is a YoU Co-Thinker.

The program responds to the “hyperlocal and international states of precarity that have been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the crises of inaction and unaccountability toward racial justice and xenophobia, climate reparations, and income disparity,” according to QM’s website. The program surrounds themes of care, repair, play, justice, and the future, dedicating resources to becoming a center for learning, research, collaboration and production.

YoU gathers creative interlocutors to explore new ways for institutions to support individuals and publics navigating a world that is always and increasingly shifting. They will become a part of the fabric of QM: six Artists-In-Residence (AIR). These residencies are research-based, encompassing discursive and participatory forms as well as object-based work such as nine Community Partners (CP) from across the Queens borough—tackling issues such as gender-justice, mental health, environmental justice, youth enrichment, gun violence prevention and intervention; LGBTQ+ activism, and civil rights for TGNB people and sex workers. Artists-In-Residence are provided with rent-free studios and financial support to work with education and community partners and to incubate exhibitions and programs.

Twelve artists, designers, scientists, writers, architects, and activists have also been invited as Co-Thinkers to share their expertise and knowledge. Working together with staff across departments and stakeholders, these thinkers will inform and participate in a deep reconsideration of museum pedagogy and infrastructure.

In Fall 2021, outputs of this learning and co-creation process will be shared through public conversations, activations, and presentations across all spaces and platforms of the Museum. YoU will conclude with collective reflection on this period of experimentation, leading to new, flexible, working methods that will help QM sustain and grow commitments to culture, accessibility, and equity.

Camnitzer is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. He received his MFA from Valand Academy, Gothenburg, Sweden and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. Combining strategies of experimental pedagogy and participatory installation, Camnitzer’s work focuses on childhood as a site of ideological and material struggle. 

Strada and Keren are New York based artists and educators who have been collaborating since 2016. Strada and Keren conduct fieldwork in cultural sites and institutions to deconstruct the systems of power that generate collective memory, with the aim of creating artworks that can help to create alternative narratives and social connections. 

Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in New York. Using video, sculpture, photography, and text, she points to the carceral, the personal, the political, and the quotidian to speak about a violence that is largely unseen, and potentially imperceptible.