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Review: Cutting the Blaze to New Frontiers at QMA
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"I imagine there are marble and glass mosques in Pakistan. One day I hope the country will allow women inside those mosques." --Zulaima Zubair, age 9, designer of a pavilion about Pakistan at QMA.
Dioramas generating thought provoking ideas.
This past weekend, O Zhang's: "Cutting the Blaze to New Frontiers" opened at the Queens Museum of Art. The starting point for Zhang's exhibit is the idea of pavilions, reminiscent of the 1939 World's Fair, which was held in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
The artist and museum canvassed schools in Queens for months. The search criterion: finding children who had never been to their immigrant parent's homeland.
"We found kids who weren't specifically interested in art, but who turned out to be really creative," Zhang said. "The children were told to learn and collect information about their parents home country and as they designed their pavilion, imagine what it would be like to visit."
My critique about the exhibit is about some of the written content on the display cards.
For example one display card said, "We wish for an overpopulated country (Pakistan) to have less people. We wish the country would have peace so less people would die."
These two ideas are provocatively poignant. However, this reviewer is skeptical that two boys under age 12 understand the consequences surrounding population density.
It would have been interesting to see individual video interviews of the 19 children, and to hear the artists in their own words talk about their process.
From the stacking of tiny ceramic tiles that resemble a Mexican ruin, to a collage of photos and pins representing the music of Jamaica, to figurines about to eat red paper slices next to a watermelon patch--the imagination and execution of the children displayed through their pavilions is often impressive.
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