The Queens Museum presents the eighth Queens International. Since its inauguration in 2002, this biennial exhibition has highlighted the contemporary cultural production of Queens communities in formats driven by the artists represented, the perspectives of its curators, and current social and cultural issues. QI 2018, titled Volumes, follows in this tradition, and for the first time includes a partnership with the Queens Library. Queens International 2018: Volumes offers a unique opportunity to address the relationship between two closely connected public organizations. While they employ different methods and have inherited different histories, both are ever-evolving in response to the community, emergent technologies, and cultural shifts.

QI 2018: Volumes departs from the notion that whether libraries and museums feel static or active we wander and chart our own paths through them—spatially, temporally, and even virtually. The word volumes encompasses many historical and current meanings in this context. Stemming from the Latin volumenus, in 13th century France, volume referred to a scroll of writing on parchment or something that is rolled or turned. In 16th century England, the word came to mean “quantity” and “a book forming part of a set.” Between the 18th and the 21st centuries, volume acquired its relationship to degrees of sound, physical dimensions, and units of data storage. With QI 2018 we also encourage poetic readings of volumes in relation to plurality, materiality, and space, especially the turns we can take through it.

QI 2018 artists represent a dialog among Queens-connected producers of several generations, including for the first time artists who have exhibited in earlier Internationals. The artists’ works respond to sites throughout the entire museum and select Queens Library branches. They question and expand systems of knowledge production using both analog and digital strategies. They rethink histories and policies through embodied experience, redemptive archives, subjective abstractions, and intangible architectures. Via these methods, they explore the potential for a nonlinear progression of time and correspondingly, a fluid approach to space.  <Queens International 2018>