Located at the tail end of the 7 train not far from LaGuardia Airport, Flushing is a magnet for longtime Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) residents and newcomers from overseas. Home to the largest Chinatown in New York, the community of Queens served as a gateway for new immigrants seeking work and housing.

A new exhibit pays homage to Flushing and its history by highlighting the work of eight artists, most of whom are neighborhood residents, and encouraging community contributions and interaction. Home-O-Stasis: Life and Livelihoods in Flushingorganized by Herb Tam and Lu Zhang, is staged in one of the many mini-malls in the area – places increasingly threatened by gentrification which have served as spaces of refuge, resource and connection for years.

Located on Kissena Boulevard near the Q17/Q27 bus stop next to the Queens Public Library, the one-story mini-mall is objectively fascinating – a building that straddles several decades. Outside, its facade is distinguished by vibrant red, yellow and blue signage pasted over fading text that alludes to the mall’s former name. The front windows are dotted with flyers advertising local businesses, housing opportunities, and other community notices. Inside the space you will find a butcher shop, beauty salon, mobile phone shop, money transfer service/tea room and barber shop; and at the very back, a 99 cent store.

On a recent Wednesday morning, the neighborhood’s downtown streets were bubbling with energy as pedestrians, buses, cars and cyclists lined the paths on their way to work, errands, appointments and classes. . Shopkeepers shouted offers of discounted clothing and goods in an attempt to grab the attention of passers-by, who slipped into the various bakeries, pharmacies, banks and offices.

A community exhibition, Homeostasis is intertwined in the space of the mini-mall as if camouflaged, blending and standing out in an unobtrusive yet profound way. At the entrance to the building, among the hung real estate advertisements, buyers are greeted by a red paper-cut butterfly created by self-taught Chinese artist Xiyadie. Decorated with Buddhist carvings and an impression of the U-Haul clock tower on College Point Boulevard, the delicate artwork was created for migrant workers who come to the mini-mall in search of housing.

Subtly interwoven with room-to-let flyers promoting cheap, short-term rentals is a handwritten sign written by Xueli Wang that reads “Mom, have you eaten? catches people looking on the bulletin board by surprise. Above paper advertisements in direct view of shopkeepers, a deconstructed calendar with carefully hand-cut dates and symbols hangs from two delicate red threads attached to the ceiling beams – an allusion to the limitless and continuous nature of time who goes by Flushing- born sculptor Anne Wu.

Referring to how local residents identify local places by familiar landmarks and experiences instead of official names, most of the artwork on display is unlabelled. Instead of a numbered address, the exhibition location is a set of descriptive directions using community markers. For Homeostasis, Yuki He and Qianfan Gu of the Mamahuhu collective created “Flushing Polyphonous” (2023), a humorous reinterpretation of the Flushing card in the form of a Monopoly-like board game. With magnetic pieces and a pair of dice, the game takes players through the Queens neighborhood focusing on landmarks and shared hyperlocal experiences.

“People here never say, ‘Oh, you go to such and such a dumpling house.’ You’d say, ‘Oh, you’re going to that dumpling house next to the gas station.’ Nobody uses the shop’s title,” Zhang, one of the HomeostasisIt is curators and contributing artists, told Hyperallergic.

A filmmaker and sculptor, Zhang sculpted a ceramic Nokia 8210 phone for the exhibit. The vintage phone is a tribute to a screen that once sat atop the facade of the mini-mall before being taken down during the pandemic. Her husband Herb Tam, a curator at the Museum of Chinese in America and a painter, also worked in the exhibit. Co-curator of the exhibit, Tam contributed a series of small paintings that display candid and intimate scenes of Flushing residents in the neighborhood.

Zhang noted how the mall’s cramped and inefficient layout makes the space function like an indoor market.

“You can get everything you need when you start a life in New York,” Zhang said, noting how many newcomers, luggage in hand, often stop at the mini-mall first to browse the options. newsletter housing, set up their phones, buy food, send money abroad, and buy other household supplies.

She explained how new luxury malls nearby, such as One Fulton Square and Tangram Tower, don’t have the same natural ecosystem that favors a certain fluidity and accessibility.

“In the new shopping centers, each seller is separated in his room. It has like a hierarchy,” she said, adding that the open layout of this mini-mall gives it a “more organic community.”

“Some of the newer models are all really big and sprawling. They have different lines of business,” Tam continued. “These malls just offer something very different to this one.”

Zhang too said that when she and Tam first suspended the exhibit, some of the mini-mall’s store owners seemed skeptical. But soon after Homeostasis opened at the end of May, local businesses adapt to the art, welcome the works and even take care of the installations in the absence of the curators. When customers mistakenly took the fake flower arrangements from Zhang’s ceramic sculpture, she said the owner of the 99-cent store noticed the missing flowers and took the initiative to replace the bouquets. Barber’s daughter Andy Zhou moved the cards and magnets to the side of “Flushing Polyphonous” when she noticed people keep knocking game pieces to the ground. Tina Lin, who runs skincare boutique Tina House, took care of Wang’s redesigned flyers and Janice Chungthe photographic series of HAN IN TOWN (2022) when the works are moved.

“We haven’t spoken to [Lin]. She didn’t speak to us. It kind of happened,” Zhang said.

One of the last elements of the exhibition, titled Dream City 2.0, is dedicated to a community archive of landmarks and personal experiences. Inspired by a 1940s commercial development project that would have wiped out much of the neighborhood, the project calls on residents to build another version of Flushing based on past dreams rather than a reimagined future. On a sheet, residents wrote the names of defunct noodle shops, bookstores and other spaces that have since been replaced by new businesses and apartments.

“This building was built in 1931, and if this plan had taken place, this building would have been demolished,” Tam said. This project is called Dream City 2.0where we talk about this history and then ask people to write down their memories of Flushing of places they remember that no longer exist but wish they could still exist.

Homeostasis runs through the end of the week until it closes on Sunday, July 23. Tam and Zhang are offering walking tours of the exhibit on Friday, July 21 from noon to 6 p.m.