Art and Anthropology (LV / Seminar)

Contemporary art practices are increasingly engaging with anthropology in order to connect their work to social realities through the implementation of anthropological theories and methodologies. Likewise, the radical transformation of anthropology which is a result of auto-critiques within the field, has paved the way for anthropologists to experiment with new ways of doing anthropology and consequently engaging in experimental methods with art practices. While these two fields are converging on a global scale, the debates around this hybrid field have generated critical questions about representation, participation, and observation, as well as the social and aesthetic ramifications of these practices. The purpose of this seminar is to address these questions by examining how anthropological interest in art has evolved over time and which trends have prompted anthropology to experiment. How do these fields of research diverge and converge? How might we use this framework to reconsider the discourses around primitivism, exoticism, and orientalism? How did the post-colonial era impact museum representational and collecting discourses? How do art and anthropology collaborate to integrate non-Eurocentric strategies? Through a shared history of art and anthropology, this seminar will not only scrutinize the transformation of art and anthropological theory since the 1980s in order to comprehend the dynamics of this confluence, but also discuss the anthropological theories that have influenced critical thinking about museum practices and material culture. This seminar will demonstrate the explicit hybridization of the two practices by examining the growing body of literature on the relationship between art and anthropology and evaluating the perspectives of scholars from both disciplines.