Aleksandra Mir's 'The Big Umbrella, London' (2004) is a performance-based work involving a large-scale umbrella the artist uses as both a functional object to shield herself from the rain and a catalyst for interaction with the public. Standing 1.6 metres tall and 2.4 metres in diameter, this specially produced object is modeled on an archetypal English man's umbrella, with black waterproof fabric and a curved leather handle. When opened, it can shelter 16 people. The extreme shift in scale of the umbrella renders it absurd, and humor infuses the experiences she has with it and with passers-by she encounters in the city.

Mir wandered London's streets and parks on a number of days in January 2004, and the resulting photographs commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery for 'State of Play' reveal her journeys in both settings. The images speak of common situations in the social life of the city, such as a walk with a friend through the rain, a haphazard encounter with a startled businessman, and the unpredictable assistance of strangers. Dressed in a white raincoat, she minimizes her presence as the artist and becomes a symbolic 'everyman'. The generic nature of the images and Mir's unselfconscious stance highlight the absurdity of the umbrella's scale. At the same time, her casual treatment of the object normalizes what we know must be a prop.

Working within the contexts if both performance and conceptual art, Mir opens herself up to unpredictable conditions as well as to the people she encounters. Her work is related to that of conceptual artists such as Vito Acconci, who created works of art base on the activity of walking through New York in the 1960'a and 70's, and Sophie Calle, who has traveled and interacted with strangers in various cities in her work since the late 1970's. Like these artist, Mir is vulnerable to the conditions of her performance, including the weather, the mass of the umbrella and the reactions it provokes in strangers. But unlike her predecessors, she does not document her journeys in narrative formats, but rather uses each photograph to capture an individual moment in the course of her project.