Past Exhibitions
Encounters - South Asian Womxn’s Creative Collective
April 1st - May 15th, 2021
Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning partnered with the South Asian Womxn’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) to present Encounters, a group exhibition curated by Grace Aneiza Ali.
Encounters is the product of 14 women, all of the South Asian Diaspora, working in collaboration as "artist pairs" across geographical, cultural, political and religious boundaries to maintain a space for connection and creativity.
Process → Project: What Comes Out of Our Sketchbooks
February 4–March 20, 2021
In this exhibition, the curators Rejin Leys and Damali Abrams invited members of SEQAA and guest artists from outside Southeast Queens to show pages from their sketchbooks and other works that show different aspects of the creative process.
Jessica Alazraki: Portraits of Latino Immigrants
November 6 - December 12, 2020
Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL) presents Portraits of Latino Immigrants, a solo exhibition of paintings by Jessica Alazraki. Opening the week of the presidential election, the exhibition offers glimpses into the everyday lives of Latinx families in the US, with its combination of bright patterns and colors and muted expressions; it is a reminder of a common humanity that we share even in politically heated and divisive times. Supported by the Queens Council on the Arts.
A Way of Learning From Everything:
2020 ARTWorks Artists-in-Residence
October 29 - December 15, 2020
A Way of Learning From Everything, showcases the art produced by the ARTWorks Fellows, Cody Ann Herrmann and Patrice Robinson, during their residency at JCAL. Referencing Learning from Las Vegas, a 1972 book co-authored by legendary architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, the exhibition signals the artists’ open attitude and position in their studio practices.
Herrmann is devoted to social-practice art that explores real estate development projects, urban ecology and related issues of gentrification. She has organized guided tours through downtown Flushing and Willets Point to the Flushing waterfront, and performed guerilla actions, such as installing street signs to raise public awareness of local environmental issues. Robinson paints portraits in oil on wood panels, exploring the complexities that people with them internally as individuals and externally as a social beings. As a Black woman artist, she shares her experience of living in today’s America, implicitly pointing out critical conditions that need structural change and improvement.
Art as Self-Reflection: 2020 ARTWorks Group Show
September 17 - October 21, 2020
Art as Self-Reflection is the first of two culminating exhibitions for the Artist Residency and Training Workshop Series (ARTWorks), JCAL’s year-long professional development fellowship for emerging artists, generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.
The exhibition features works of eight of the seminar fellows: Julia Forrest, Monnero Guervil, MO$H MALi, Angela Miskis, Dario Mohr, Nancy Paredes, Megan Roper, and Marie E. Saint-Cyr.
Queer Caribbeans of NYC | Stonewall 50
August 8 – September 7, 2020
On view online
Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning partners with Caribbean Equality Project to present this digital version of Queer Caribbeans of NYC | Stonewall 50, the first-ever multimedia retrospective showcase of the racial and cultural intersections of Caribbean LGBTQ rights activists. The exhibition contributes to New York City’s immigrant history by expanding on Caribbean immigrant and first-generation Caribbean-American experiences through exploring Queer, Transgender, and Gender non-conforming advocacy.
Queer Caribbeans of NYC showcases the pioneering work of Caribbean activists, organizers, and artists who set the foundation for victories within the Caribbean LGBTQ+ diasporic community, and their contributions to the broader LGBTQ+ liberation movements of New York City. These include Caribbean Pride, Sistas of Caribbean Ancestry (SOCA), Curry Club NYC, Chutney Pride, Urban&Out, the Gay Caribbean USA Pageant, and Caribbean Equality Project.
Community & Culture:
An Exhibition of Artworks by Queens College Art Education Graduate Students
May 20 – July 19, 2020
As the students were turning the lens to their own community consisting of neighborhoods in Queens, Long Island, and Rockland County, the class was disrupted by COVID-19. It was as though the external circumstances forced us, individually and collectively, to redefine our definition of a community and our roles within it.
Participating artists: Maria Brownsell, Ana Castro, Taylor Foerster, Yinshi Huang, Ivana Ng, Beata Szyszkowska, Tom Travers, Emily (Xiaolei) Wang.
Starting with Flushing, Queens as a model, the students explored its rich history beginning with the Flushing Remonstrance, a protest document for religious freedom, the connection to the Underground Railroad, and its current status as one of the most diverse neighborhoods in America.
As the students were turning the lens to their own community consisting of neighborhoods in Queens, Long Island, and Rockland County, the class was disrupted by COVID-19. It was as though the external circumstances forced us, individually and collectively, to redefine our definition of a community and our roles within it.
Participating artists: Maria Brownsell, Ana Castro, Taylor Foerster, Yinshi Huang, Ivana Ng, Beata Szyszkowska, Tom Travers, Emily (Xiaolei) Wang.
2020 Southeast Queens Biennial: Writing Home
Feb 14 – June 20, 2020
Statistics document the impressive ethnic and cultural diversity of Queens but, for those who live here, numbers appear hollow and rhetorical. What is it like to live/work/playlike to live/work/play within culture-fluid communities that are still becoming "home" for its residents? The 2020 Southeast Queens Biennial curators, Molaundo Jones and Margaret Rose Vendryes, invited ten artists with a significant connection to Queens to address literacy, identity, and environment with work that investigates ways of being an integral part of the borough’s fabric through visual art.
Participating artists: Jessica Alazraki, Christy Bencosme, Yarisa Colón Torres, Audrey Dimola, Nicholas Fraser, Jacqueline Herranz-Brooks, Jinyu Lu, William Jackson, Julian Luis Phillips, Tiger White.
John Smith: Transit Series
February 1-29, 2020
Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning and the Community Access Art Collective partner to present the first solo exhibition by artist John Smith.
A lifelong artist, Smith (b. 1955), born and raised in Brooklyn, has been a Queens resident for over 20 years. Smith was awarded a Queens Council on the Arts New Works grant to create 10 of the 11 acrylic paintings included in The Transit Series. The paintings look at the daily lives and activities that take place in New York City subways and buses.