Paper short abstract:

Collaborative installation art can interweave disparate indigenous community voices and concerns into a coherent three-dimensional whole. But their complex narratives, a result of local participation, can render them difficult for outsiders to understand without local interpretation.

Paper long abstract:

The ethical perils and moral burdens that face outsiders who try to represent diversity and change within marginalized indigenous cultures through art have been extensively debated, in particular by critical visual anthropologists. Representatives of indigenous communities, it is hoped, can provide a more complicated and realistic insider's portrayal of their community. The benefits and disadvantages of participatory video are well known. This paper discusses two participatory community installation art projects exploring aspirations and fears regarding identity and development with representatives of indigenous Benet peoples in Uganda and Khasi peoples in India implemented in collaboration with Dutch artists as well as anthropologists development and museum experts. Both installations interweave disparate community voices and concerns regarding identity and development into a coherent whole, and discuss this narrative with both insiders and outsiders. But their complexity, a result of local participation, also renders them very difficult for outsiders to understand without local interpretation. The participatory work method motivated large audiences of young and old indigenous people, in communities that do not normally visit art galleries or ethnographic museums, to attend the presentations. The value of these art projects might therefore best be seen in terms of relational aesthetics: the capacity to involve citizens in studying and representing themselves, to reflect on the right to development with identity in a globalizing economy, and to provide new opportunities and modes of engagement for artists and anthropologists to work with indigenous people and help them visualize their aspirations and concerns.