Jaime Emily Powell
Once a year we meet
––the concrete exoskeleton of the city built without facility to contend with it.
And so we’ve followed,
forgetting how we used to greet it.
Within tanned skin we search for shelters, bewildered.
Detained under flame poinciana and tamarind.
Arrive compacted into shop fronts, watching economic disparity drive
i’ve seen cars impervious, some wearing four bangles on their noses.
Kadapa pavement lined with toes,
none will wince at these unhomely vehicles.
Don’t trickle down on us.
Stuck inside, I’m here now.
Straddled, being.
Eyes circling ceiling.
i no longer live here.
It is a familiar.
Cyclical,
obsessive and repetitive.
To live,
love.
And fuck. For all this distance, i still know so much.
How i know to waft in the petrichor,
how to watch things nearer and nearer disappear past the pouring.
Seeping in, wringing
Filling, saturating me, forcing feeling.
Till all retaliation it dilutes and washes
Will tamed, in resignation,
I might now allow this.
Jaime Emily Powell, Installation View. Image Courtesy of University of Melbourne.
Jaime Emily Powell, Untitled (Ongoing) with Diana Rahim and Divaagar, Digital photograph, 2023. Image courtesy of Jaime Emily Powell.
Jaime Emily Powell, Hoard I (site responsive version), dye sublimation print on IFR muslin, 228 x 560 cm, 2022. Image courtesy of Lucy Foster / Project 8.
Jaime Emily Powell, Nothing to see here, digital print on vinyl, hardware, 2023. Image courtesy of Jaime Emily Powell.
Jaime Emily Powell, Leaps and bounds (detail), digital print on vinyl, hardware, 2024. Image courtesy of Jaime Emily Powell.
Jaime Emily Powell, Untitled (translucence), etching on paper, 2024. Image courtesy of Jaime Emily Powell.
Jaime Emily Powell, Untitled (transitions), 2 min 47 sec, 2024. Video courtesy of Jaime Emily Powell / Gianna Rizzo.
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music
University of Melbourne