Contemporary art and its practices have evolved, expanding in awareness of the world and its audience. Modern art breaches the borders of other sympathetic disciplines as artists adopt new methods of researching and creating. One such discipline is anthropology; as art has connected with its own social and cultural contexts and impacts, artists have adopted anthropological methods and more empirical processes.
As a holistic social field of study, anthropology observes the interconnection of a focus with all that surrounds it – nothing exists within a vacuum. In terms of methodology too, this consideration of intersectionality means contemporary anthropology takes an observational approach towards research, which considers the interlocutors and the very process of investigation. This is the approach that contemporary artists have begun to adopt, especially in the case of participation, a key anthropological method, that has existed in contemporary art too since the 1990s as an element of ‘relational aesthetics’ (Bourriaud, 1996) – a genre that explores human relations and social contexts in art, one that titularly recognises the interrelational manner of anthropology.
Anthropology, too, has been affected by its entwinement with art. Becoming more interdisciplinary and multimodal, subfields such as visual anthropology are clear evidence of contemporary art’s entanglement. Artistic processes such as painting, drawing and sculpture can be considered artistic research methods with their use in inciting enquiry and can challenge the research modes of traditional anthropology, shaping a new contemporary that borrows from the visual and sensory styles of artists.
The growing entanglement of the two disciplines is evident in contemporary spaces, as this essay will explore by looking at the examples of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (Pad Thai) (1992) and Ruangrupa’s project for Documenta 15 to explore anthropology’s use in art. To explore how artistic research methods have decentred anthropology, Kyra Sacks’ Drawn in The Field (2020) and Susan Ossman’s essay on her use of painting in visual anthropology (Making Art Ethnography (2010)) will serve as examples of the alliance between anthropology and art. Animated by these cases, this text will delve into the methodologies of both disciplines and their multifaceted functions, portraying the ways that contemporary art and contemporary anthropology exist in alignment and assist one another towards a more fluid and expanded scope of reflection, one ever-necessary in denigrating hegemonic power relations between the viewer and the viewed, the creator and the audience, the self and the other.
Anthropological Methods As Contemporary Art Practice
Rirkrit Tiravinija is a contemporary Thai artist whose work often revolves around installations and audience participation. Focusing on the experiential rather than painting or sculpture, Tirivanija’s work is “fundamentally about bringing people together.” (Tomkins, 2005). One such example of this is the artist’s renowned 1990 work Untitled (Pad Thai), one of a series of installations that involved turning the gallery – in this case, New York’s Paula Allen Gallery – into a kitchen that cooked and served food, inviting the gallery-goers to eat and share the space communally. As is evident from the title, this example featured several Thai men and women, including Rirkrit himself, cooking and serving pad thai, integrating Thai ingredients and customs into his work and the exhibition. Despite its seeming simplicity, this artwork is grounded in several social, cultural and political intentions. As a Thai artist, Tiravinija uses the piece to remark on the Western colonial tendency of museums to isolate objects from their social and cultural contexts, and thus he recontextualises these orientalised objects by using them in an attempt to decolonise the gallery space; “In contrast, enjoying a meal is a way to really engage with and understand the other” as the artist spoke of the piece (Newell-Hanson, 2022). Often deemed the ‘Poster Boy of Relational Aesthetics’ (Perreault, 2011), Tiravanija’s Pad Thai is also a means of social interaction in the gallery space, a call for participation between the artist, the artwork, the audience and the space in which it resides. For the artist, the very serving, offering and eating of the food is the art; as Renate Dohmen writes, “It is the convivial consumption of the pad thai…that constitutes the artwork” (Dohmen, 2011, p. 35). This intention endeavours to reframe the sociality of art and art spaces, to “cross physical and imaginary boundaries” (Tiravanija, 2023), the way that relational aesthetics aspires to in its focus on the exchanges between artist and audience and the social relations that exist in art.
Both Pad Thai’s relational aestheticism and decolonial critique are evidence of anthropology’s place among art. While decoloniality is more of an anthropological idea than a method, the contested objects Tiravanija conveys in the piece resemble the critique of orientalism and colonialism that contemporary anthropology has actively and methodologically adopted in an attempt to reshape its own problematic and displacing past. By activating the decontextualised and immobilised objects of the Western museum, Tiravanija “Looks beyond the colonizer’s perspectives”, “recognize(s) and confront(s) the discipline’s colonial legacies” and reflects upon colonial restraints just as A. Lynne Bolles writes that decolonial anthropology does (Bolles, 2023, p. 519-522). Furthermore, the artist uses anthropological methods of participation and collaboration in his adoption of the “artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space” that Nicolas Bourriaud refers to as relational aesthetics in his seminal 1996 book that defined the genre (Bourriaud, 1996, p. 113). Participation is a key anthropological method that ties in with the observant nature of the empirical discipline, and in assuming the same participatory method in this art piece, Tiravinija invites his audience to exist as part of the work, a collaborator instead of just its viewer. Furthermore, with its invitation and service, the distribution of food to the audience resembles gift exchange, a component of relational aesthetics that also comes from anthropology. Here, the anthropological notion of the gift in relational and participatory art such as Pad Thai shows how the two fields are “inextricably related” (Sansi, 2017, p. 87). The artist’s cooking and serving of food in the exhibition space engages with the ‘deep anthropological practice of listening with our ears and with our hands,’ (Rizmi, McGranahan, 2016) in the participatory and observant style that Tiravinija adopts, and it becomes evident that anthropology has had an influence on art with this work as an example.
Ruangrupa’s work for Documenta 15, too, is an example of anthropology’s influence on art practices, as the group adopted similar anthropological and ethnographic methods for Lumbung (2020). For the quinquennial art exhibition Documenta, held in Kassel, Germany, the Jakartan art collective curated the fifteenth instalment with community and collaboration in mind. Documenta 15 was centred around the concept of Lumbung, a rice barn that stores communally-produced rice as a shared future resource, focusing on the biennale as a centre of resources in this same way. As a collective rooted in collaboration and holistic social and personal art practices, Lumbung’s focus on an “alternative economy of collectivity”, “equitable distribution” and “shared resource building” (Documenta Fifteen, 2022) aligned with the group’s core values and provided the projects curatorial and thematic approach. The concept of Lumbung was also its practice; using collaboration, community and conversation to evolve and change through artist interactions, building works that do not exist independently but as a collective. This curatorial approach and practice elicited a fluid and changing collection throughout its 100-day instalment; “the venues are constantly changing: they are places in which to meet, discuss, and learn. Exhibition buildings become living rooms, and together the artists decide how to use each venue.”(Documenta Fifteen, 2022). Lumbung forms an interdisciplinary, cooperative practice that transcends traditional art in the way Ruangrupa always champions, anchored in communal values of friendship, generosity and regeneration.
Much as Tiravinija’s cooking and consumption of Pad Thai constituted the artwork, Ruangrupa’s curatorial method became the art itself, blending with the collectivity of the works and artists themselves to become an amalgam of art and practice. Ruangrupa’s project rethinks relationships, forms of exchange and participation, making sharing its practice. This case is evidence of anthropology’s further entanglement with art in its reconsiderations and reflections on practice and methodology. One way in which Documenta 15 channels anthropological methods is in its devotion to ‘deep hanging out’: coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, this method consists of one immersing themselves in a group or community on an informal level, observing from among them. As curators, Ruangrupa involves itself deeply with its artists, making art of the communal conversations and exchanges, as they continue past production, into the gallery spaces and exhibition. The group channels anthropology also in Lumbung’s focus on participation, just as Tiravanija does, cultivating a community in the name of art and observing how it grows and changes with collaboration, exploring the sociality of art. Ruangrupa seeks to create partnership and collaboration in every step of Documenta 15, banishing hierarchical power relations and promoting a polyphonic, collective space the way that Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban writes of collaboration in contemporary anthropology (Fluehr-Lobban, 2008, p.175). This project for Documenta 15 encapsulates more than just art, and leans towards anthropology in its focus on exploring sociality, cultural cultivation and community; by making sharing its key practice Lumbung transcends art practice and becomes a greater cultural platform and community that continues past the 2022 exhibit.
Both Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Pad Thai and Ruangrupa’s Documenta 15 curation show the ways that anthropology has influenced and integrated with contemporary art practices. As art has become more interdisciplinary, multimodal and more affected by social and cultural contexts, it has adopted anthropological methods and concepts to explore sociality and community. These two examples almost become ethnographies and anthropological works themselves in their adoption of practices and ideas, exploring the gallery spaces as more than just showrooms and exploring relationships between curator, artist and audience as more than just hierarchical interactions.
Artistic Research Methods in Anthropology
Susan Ossman followed the interdisciplinary turn of anthropology in the 1990s, studying and practicing visual anthropology. In the essay anthology Between Art and Anthropology (2010), Ossman wrote about art as ethnography and painting as an ethnographic practice, an idea her own work has explored, but still one that, she writes, remains “pointedly ignored” as a contribution to developing anthropological knowledge (Ossman, 2010, p.127). Using examples of her own paintings the visual anthropologist looked at the art form’s potential as an abstract and interpretive reflection of a place, culture or community. One such example is her piece Hills of Chaouen (1990), a triptych that portrays the region of Chaouen in Morocco, by reflecting the place’s landscape and weavers. This idea that Ossman explores is also supported by anthropologist Zoe Bray, who argues in her article for Visual Anthropology Review (2015), that painting shares with ethnography the same “empathetic and sensitive process of long-term observation and contextual interaction” (Bray, 2015, p. 119) that allows anthropologists to create ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973). Ossman continues, writing that Hills of Chaouen’s reception highlighted a different value of paintings to anthropology; the work took a new form when perceived, acting as a screen that projected reactions and positionalities, such as her Morrocan friend’s interpretation of the painting as a statement about the Iraq war. In this example, the subjectivity of a painting allows for what it reflects to evolve, for its reception to change and for it to stimulate discussions of positionality and politics. This art form can provoke engagement with the field, opening spaces for conversation and dispute. Ossman’s writing supports this, as she likens a painting to a field note:
“It can focus attention on certain objects, regularities or connections. Once it is hung in public, it can stimulate exchanges about aesthetics, or politics. It can become a projection or a double of the ethnographer.” (Ossman, 2010, p.134)
Here, painting becomes a representation of both the interlocutor and the ethnographer, as well as a methodology in and of itself.
Ossman’s exploration of painting as a potential ethnographic practice shows the research technique to be valuable to contemporary, interdisciplinary anthropology. The fluid and observational nature of painting resembles the same quality of ethnography, but more vital is the way that this methodology affords the field and interlocutors a point of discussion just as Ossman’s Hills of Chaouen did. The subjectivity of paintings can facilitate evolving reflection, they can be rethought just as traditional anthropological texts have been and can be received differently in different spaces just as similarly. Ossman’s use of the artistic research method makes perfect sense in this consideration and works as a rationale for more frequent use as visual anthropology remains merely emergent even a decade after this publication.
Among many recent examples, Kyra Sacks’ Drawn in The Field (2020) shows a turn in fieldwork research toward sketching and drawing in anthropology. As a visual artist and social anthropologist, Sacks walks the line between the two disciplines in a lot of her work, as is shown in Drawn In The Field; a reflection on her use of drawing as an anthropologist and a display of her fieldwork sketches for an ethnography of the refugee crisis in Lesvos, Greece. In her own words, combining ethnographic fieldwork with sketching “managed to contain an embodied experience that could later be unpacked” (Sacks, 2020). Evident in her writing and the pages of her monochrome drawings and notes, Sacks’ use of sketching rather than only writing creates a less rigid and prosaic rendition of events observed, one more emotive and engaging, that better reflected the crisis she was witnessing and investigating. Sacks also conveys the tangled chaos of what she was observing; too difficult to unravel with only words that she felt “only decreased the totality of the experience instead of doing it justice” (Sacks, 2020). Drawing provided a better account that encompassed more. Renowned anthropologist Michael Taussig shares this view in his seminal text I Swear I Saw This (2011), a descriptive rationale for the use of drawing in anthropology. Taussig writes that sketches “provide a welcome pause to the writing machine whereby another philosophy of representation and meditation takes over” (Taussig, 2011, p.25), benefitting the anthropologist and their fieldwork by way of reflection and escape from the unvaried manner that fieldwork notes can adopt. Agreeing that reliance on writing can “fall short” (Sacks, 2020), Sacks suggests that drawing in the field can also be used for connection more than just recording. The anthropologist’s use of art provided an exchange for interlocutors, becoming a multifaceted research method as she offered drawings and portraits in return for people’s stories. As well as this use of art, the anthropologist’s presentation of her Lesvos ethnography conveyed the same openness as she talks of in her notes “Allow(ing) the reader to unpack it further and mak(ing) the urgency of the situation tangible” (Sacks, 2020).
Kyra Sacks’ use of sketching and drawing in her ethnography of Lesvos provides an example of artistic research methods used in anthropology and argues their place and value in a more multimodal version of the discipline that benefits from the openness, fluidity and embodiment that drawing can provide to fieldwork notes.
While there is some similarity between Susan Ossman’s and Kyra Sacks’ use of art forms in anthropology, Ossman’s rationale for painting in ethnography refers more to its use in opening spaces for discussion, while Sacks’ sketches facilitate a less rigid and more embodied expression of fieldwork to be used in ethnography. In both cases, the argument for an anthropology that embraces multimodality and artistic methods is convincing, and while some anthropologists and ethnographers have embraced such techniques, there is still room for the discipline to grow. Using the methods and practices of art, such as sketching and painting, challenges anthropology to become more fluid, integrative and multidisciplinary.
The instances of anthropology’s influence on contemporary art and art’s influence on anthropology provided in this essay are a few of many examples that show the two disciplines’ entanglement in recent decades. Tiravanija’s and Ruangrupa’s works provide evidence of art’s ontological turn towards anthropological knowledge and acknowledgement of social and cultural contexts; Lumbung blurs the lines between curation and art as well as the lines between the collective and the individual; Tiravanija’s Pad Thai addresses the colonialism of the gallery space and works to dismantle it through collaboration, participation and gift exchange. In their multimodal approaches, they both adopt ethnographic methods and almost become ethnographies as the interactions and observations they instigate constitute the artworks themselves. Both of these artists and pieces are compelling examples of interdisciplinary and multimodal contemporary art that work to expand the social and cultural dimensions of art. Although they were created over 30 years apart, the artworks equally take steps toward a reconstructed art discipline, evidently influenced by contemporary anthropology, and both equally promote its further involvement.
Susan Ossman’s and Kyra Sacks’ use of art processes in their anthropological work establishes the necessity of its consideration in contemporary anthropology; a version of the discipline that is more fluid and multimodal, one that embraces the protean nature of culture and humanity, and thus recognises the confinement of textual field notes and presentations. In their own ways, Ossman and Sacks portray the multifaceted capabilities of artistic research methods; the former addresses the value of painting in reflecting upon the field and in provoking discussion, referring to a displayed painting almost as a screen that can be projected onto. The latter anthropologist writes about the importance of drawing and sketching in fieldwork to capture the field more entirely, channelling emotion and embodiment more than written notes do. In both examples, the value of imagery to anthropology is clear and suggestive of a more encompassing methodology that should be used. While the two advocates refer to themselves as both artists and anthropologists, their convictions are inclusive of all anthropologists and promote the approach as something that should be used throughout the discipline. As contemporary anthropology continues to shape, Ossman and Sacks are examples of art’s important consideration in challenging the static and traditional elements that remain embedded.
The growing interlacement of anthropology and art over the last few decades is a necessary reassessment of inflexible approaches that artists and anthropologists alike can remain within. As the two disciplines grow in their contemporary phases, they require an awareness of their contexts, impacts and traditionality, factors that examples like the ones referred to in this essay work to reframe and reconsider. In the current climate, it is crucial to challenge the hierarchical and colonial relations of all disciplines, and in breaking boundaries and self-reflecting, artists and anthropologists can work towards undoing such power relations and structures that are prominent in the cultural and social contexts within which they exist.
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