Air

Jemima Wyman Pairrebeener people Born 1977, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and Los Angeles, United States Red flares, white smoke bombs and the yellow smog of tear gas come together in Jemima Wyman’s towering collage Plume 20 2022. Wyman gleans hundreds of haze-filled scenes of protest from online sources. Printing and cutting each image by hand, she severs air from its original context, layering disconnected smoke trails into a vast, leftward-blowing plume. Organised gatherings and spontaneous uprisings, actions of both the political left and right pool together in this final collage, as scenes from Kyiv, Santiago, New Delhi, Minneapolis, Hong Kong and elsewhere curl into one dense cloud. Occasionally, we can just make out a human figure amid the haze. The ‘Plume’ series emerged from the artist’s ongoing focus on different masking strategies used by activists. Plastic Guy Fawkes disguises, colourful Pussy Riot balaclavas and makeshift face coverings have become central motifs in her study of collective anonymity; however, this new project looks past these disguises to the ‘mask’ created by smoke and haze. The smoke from flares and torches envelops a crowd, creating a shared identity, yet haze can also intercept and disorient protest in the form of police-issued tear gas and stun grenades, or ‘flashbangs’. Acknowledging this, Wyman highlights smoke as both a mode of camouflage used by demonstrators and as a weapon deployed against them. Air — usually invisible and intangible — is revealed as a site of contest in which the State and its subjects confront each other. Like many of the artist’s works, Plume 20 has a pages-long subtitle that details her source images: Smoke from hand-held smoke bomb during a ‘Yellow Vest’ protest, Nantes, France, 11 May 2019; Smoke during a protest over failing economic situation, Beirut, Lebanon, 17 October 2019; Smoke during student strike and protest advocating for investigations into police violence and political reform at the University of Hong Kong in the Shatin district, 11 November 2019 . . . Jemima Wyman / Plume 4 2021 171 Invisible