Wyman's new artwork for the Liverpool Biennial, Collective Coverings, Communal Skin,
will explore camouflage fabric as a material with symbolic links to
violence and conflict. Donated second-hand camouflage and hunting
t-shirts will be used as weaving material on hula-hoop looms. The local
community is invited to meditatively weave with the artist while
transforming objects of conflict (uniforms/hunting t-shirts) into
objects of comfort (soft psychedelic weavings). All of these individual
woven contributions will then be added together to construct an internal
architecture at FACT, re-territorializing the hard architecture of the
institution into a site of radical hospitality. The process and final
woven architecture will create space for group catharsis by building a
communal site for contemplation, conversation and embodied knowledge.
Wyman
has made Mandala-like hand-cut collages of liberation armies in
irregular military uniforms, visually aggressive nomadic architecture,
moveable communal body pillows and paintings of anonymously clad
camouflaged bodies in protest from recent historic events. Her practice
in its breadth aims to tackle the transformative potential of fabric
representing its part in world events while also producing environments
for the visitor to experience its effects first hand.
Jemima Wyman investigates the political potential of patterned fabric through photography, video, painting and social practice. Wyman is interested in generating and illustrating 'communal skins'. This term was devised by the artist to articulate the role of fabric as social camouflage. Her work aims to explore the formal, political and psychological potentiality of camouflage in reference to collective identity. Patterned fabric over the centuries has been pathologized as feminine, decorative and passive. Wyman disagrees with these art historical notions of pattern. She began researching where patterned fabric was used in contradiction to this idea, where it appeared as a visual resistance strategy in conflict, protest and war.
