In this interview, the author and Australian artist Jemima Wyman discuss the position of art and activism in Wyman's artistic practice. Focusing on opacity as a political position in the conception and production of her artwork, Wyman comments on her use of patterns, performance, and collaborative interventions as well as the feminist and activist legacies that inform her video, performance, and installation works. For Wyman, opacity and camouflage enable collective emancipatory action in a time of contemporary neoliberal forms of surveillance, as seen in the practices of Pussy Riot members in Russia, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas, Mexico, and the global hacktivist group Anonymous. Drawing on global protest movements as well as debates in the history of art, Wyman offers her thoughts on how visual opacity and collective actions obfuscate as well as activate political resistance in her artwork.
Author notes
Jasmina Tumbas is an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her teaching and research fields focus on modern and contemporary art and theory, histories and theories of performance, body and conceptual art, art and activism, the politics of contemporary visual culture, and critical theory. Her research has been published in ArtMargins and Sztuka i dokumentacja (Art and Documentation).