Volumes Cyanotype

Curated by Queens Museum's Sophia Marisa Lucas with artist Baseera Khan, QI 2018 brings together 43 artists from Queens, the most diverse borough in what is often considered the most diverse city in the United States. While the dedicated website for QI 2018, done by artist Ryan Kuo with Taekeun Kim, is structured about the Queens Museum building – built for the 1964 World's Fair, used briefly for the United Nations, and expanded by Grimshaw in 2013 – the most architecturally appealing piece in person is Volumes Cyanotype.

Facilitated by artist Essye Klempner and Queens Museum's Lindsey Berfond, Volumes Cyanotype is mounted beneath the skylight at the center of the museum. This space was the setting for a communal meal, where the QI 2018 artists dined at a tablecloth treated with a photosensitive chemical solution that generated a blueprint after exposure to sunlight. We see the plates and utensils common to meals but also other objects – objects the artists brought to turn the cyanotype (or sun-print) into an expression of their individual identities.

Most interesting from an architectural point of view is the way Volumes Cyanotype turned the museum into a camera. In its creation, architecture became a ​tool for making art rather than just a setting for displaying it. Sure, the building does the latter during the run of QI 2018, but the artwork suspended from the skylight – the only artwork occupying the center of the large space – conveys the potential of architecture as a medium for creation; and it illustrates how the highly diverse artists in the exhibition came together for a unified expression.