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The rows of large photographic banners hanging from a 40-foot ceiling in the Queens Museum of Art look at first glance like those you'd find in a sports arena. Peer closer, though, and you see not superstar mugs or sponsor ads but oversized students from Jackson Heights'
IS 230, along with Arabic script - sometimes written in neon.
"The Arabic Alphabet Project" is a collaborative installation of the students and the award-winning artist Wendy Ewald, in which 28 hanging banners catch the eye by juxtaposing Arabic writing over images of teen life in Queens, from posturing homeboys to a clutched bouquet of flowers to a cold, congealing school lunch.
This is the fourth addition to Ewald's "American Alphabets" series, the title of a book-in-progress that will explore the relationship of words and images in an array of American experiences. For the projects, children and teens of various backgrounds were asked to come up with words from a foreign alphabet that could be depicted by photographs. Putting the language in this form "demystifies it," says Ewald, standing beneath the colorful flags, which she hopes to use as an introduction to both a foreign tongue and largely unseen culture. "It is an educational tool."
The series began with Ewald's interest in the Latino community of Durham, N.C., which had developed there largely as a result...