Jamaica Flux 2021: Workspaces & Windows is a two-part group exhibition featuring the research modules of 14 NYC-based artists and artist groups. Damali Abrams, Heejung Cho, Indranil Choudhury, Cody + Julian, Sherese Francis, Linda Ganjian, Hayoon Jay Lee, Le’Andra LeSeur, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Firoz Mahmud, Nadia Misir, Sari Nordman, Jessica Segall, and Misra Walker took on the year-long endeavor to further create public, socially-engaged projects in collaboration with organizations and sites throughout the neighborhood of Jamaica. On display in the Miller and Community Galleries at JCAL were the various research materials and works that were gathered and created in the process, both virtually and in-person. These artist research projects provide various entry points into reflecting on the anxieties and tensions of our present moment—creative and collective responses that draw upon the social, political, ecological, digital, interactive, guerilla, and sonic.
In times of global pandemic, art worlds everywhere have had to ask the question: how do we engage in times of closed doors and borders? Turning to community through hybrid organizing and relationship-building, these projects keep with the spirit of “flux” at the more localized, specific temporalities of everyday life. Each makes space for work that both shapes and is transformed by the limitations and demands of the times. Since its first iteration in 2004, Jamaica Flux has brought together artists, curators, scholars, local residents, community leaders, politicians, and stakeholders to build on the cultural legacy of Southeast Queens. With the greater intent to expand equity and cultural inclusion, Jamaica Flux strives to commission and present publicly accessible art projects while also documenting the developments and contradictions that arise in the process.
Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2021 is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Resorts World New York, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
