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This paper investigates curatorial practice as an anthropological practice, in an expanded concept. I analyze two exhibitions about race in Brazil, curated by the anthropologist Lilia Schwarcz, aiming to explore the consequences in the Brazilian cultural system after these exhibitions.

Paper Abstract:

This paper analyzes two exhibitions curated by the anthropologist Lilia Schwarcz, understanding curatorial practice here as an anthropological practice in an expanded concept (Nakamura, 2013). By looking at these two exhibitions, whose themes involve debates on race in the Afro-Brazilian context, the aim is to investigate the consequences and developments in the Brazilian arts system after these exhibitions and the consequent dispute of narratives generated by these curatorships. More than just a way of instrumentalizing power, curatorship, if linked to and built alongside anthropology, can be a paradigm shift in systems dominated by market logic. (Sansi, 2015). Does the existence of exhibitions curated by anthropologists promote the inclusion of more non-white, queer, LGBTIQIAP+, indigenous and women artists and arts professionals? How the exhibitions curated by anthropologists addressed to contemporary debates and demands? (Cocotle, 2019; Clifford, 1997). How have these two exhibitions changed the panorama of Brazilian arts in the last ten years? To answer these questions, I propose an ethnography of these two exhibitions and an analysis of their curatorship, including the selection of works and artists, the participating institutions, their catalog, and anthology of texts, expography and public program.

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The centenary of Modern Art Week in 2022 did not reproduce the glorification narrative institutionalized by the fiftieth anniversary. Several exhibitions confronted the event and its repercussions with the expressive strength of artistic production underestimated by the modernist movement.

Paper Abstract:

Whether through visits from foreigners, access to books or study trips, young artists from the city of São Paulo did not come into contact with modern European art to give a voice to the excluded, but to refine their own sensibility and, thus, like modern European artists, they appropriated other forms, or the forms of others, as means of expression. These forms, however, remain alive in other modernities and resurface. Traditionally, images of spiritual beings occupied more of the collective imagination than material culture. Making them visible is not a simple task for contemporary indigenous artists, although modernist artists and writers did so with aplomb operating under the motto that “anthropophagy unites us”. Jaider Esbell, Denilson Baniwa and Daiara Tukano highlight the persistence of this imaginary by “trampling” colonialist physical images with a modality of image that modern, normative and deritualized society is no longer capable of producing. Among other important productions inside and outside the city of São Paulo, we consider "Once upon a time there was modern (1910-1944)" at the FIESP Cultural Center, "This extraordinary Mário de Andrade" at the Afro Brasil Museum, "Raio-que-o-parta: fictions of the modern in Brazil" at SESC and "Countermemory", first visual arts exhibition held at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo since the 1922 Modern Art Week. The comparative examination of specific curatorial gestures from each exhibition might open a window for understanding the process of memorialization of Brazilian Modernism.

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While discussing how curation has contributed to co/re-designing art circuits, anthropology, and other spheres, this paper focuses on an exhibition at the Quai Branly analysing how exotism continues to be fuelled, particularly from global museums, and in booming times of Amazonian indigenous art.

Paper Abstract:

In 1992 Mari Carmen Ramírez published “Beyond the Fantastic” to question the exhibition Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920-1987 at the Indianapolis Museum, criticising its homogenised representation of a supposed fantastic mentality throughout Latin America. Ramírez highlighted the importance to engage with knowledge produced from Latin America to understand the complexities of a continent.

This paper, entitled “Beyond the Shamanic”, analyses the exhibition Shamanic Visions: Ayahuasca Arts in the Peruvian Amazons at the Quai Branly. It asks: What roles does art play in the curatorial narrative and exhibition? What role does ayahuasca play in the show and its publicity? How does the exhibition engage with the artworks, its aesthetics, and artists’ agendas? Moreover, how does the curatorial narrative engage with the artistic-curatorial history and work from the global south? Which is the relation of museums and market in fuelling narratives at museum level to mobilise economic value? While being at the Quai Branly could be seen as a success –considering the symbolic, economic, power of the museum and the city- what narratives are being fuelled from the Quai Branly with this exhibition? Looking at this show in relation to other recent exhibitions of Amazonian art in the global south and Europe, this paper recognises the powerful role of curation in re/co-designing the art circuits, anthropology, and other spheres, but its aim is to place emphasis in discussing the continues fuelling of exotism from anthropology and museums, particularly at global stages and in booming times of Amazonian indigenous art.

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This paper delves into most recent exhibitions of Ukrainian art, unveiling "wartifacts"—artworks embodying war's traces. It questions global curatorial representations and considers the status of Ukrainian artists as new embattled subjects, embodying and mediating conflict within museal spaces.

Paper Abstract:

This paper critically examines post-2022 international exhibitions of Ukrainian contemporary art. Amidst the war, the showcased art, bodies, and voices take on a new dimension, becoming metaphorical arguments in the discourse opposing authoritarian regimes. It questions how these exhibitions represent Ukraine and its people, proposing a reflection on "wartifacts" - artworks embodying physical, affective, and emotional traces of war and ruination - that emerged in the Euro-American curatorial landscape. Wartifacts diversify the range of authentic ethnographic artifacts presented as "art" (Clifford) in international museal settings.

Drawing from ethnographic and curatorial work with Ukrainian artists, the paper explores their experiences, reflecting a formation of a new group within the spectrum of "embattled subjects" in Western curatorial expression. These subjects, present in museal spaces, embody and mediate the conflict, often feeling a responsibility for "diplomatic representation" and advocacy for their country. The paper questions Ukraine's position in the geography of "curating" and "curated" cultures, still influenced by the orientalizing "Savage Sublime."

Using the recent HKW exhibition, "As though we hid the sun in the sea of stories", as a case study, the presentation addresses the curators' ambition "to counter the epistemologies of coloniality through collaborative networks." It proposes a new geographic designation for the formerly Soviet region—termed either Northern Eurasia or the Global East. The paper concludes with a reflection on the refusal of some Ukrainian artists to participate in this exhibition, emphasizing their refusal of being exhibited and "healed" (curare) in the proposed way, which was insufficiently problematized within the project.

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Paper Short Abstract:

Indigenous histories is a collective exhibition that invited indigenous curators around the globe to propose a curatorial approach of their art worlds. My aim is to reflect about contradictions and potentialities of this proposal in an institutional museum, regarding the process and its results.

Paper Abstract:

Indigenous histories is a collective exhibition organized by the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo and the Kode Bergen Art Museum. The show invited curators around the globe to propose a section based in the arts, images, objects, and visual cultural that could give the general public access of a fragment, curatorially organized, of the relations between Indigenous art and its representation through history in different territories.

The idea of comparison is central. Each of these researchers and artists lives and works in regions of the world where the interaction between indigenous and institutionalized art takes place in very different ways.

Indigenous populations are defined by a deep and ancestral relationship with territories that were invaded during the colonization process. Through a lot of resistance and struggle, practices, materiality and visual traditions have been transformed over the centuries, constituting narrative and visual paradigms that have been interiorized by academia and museums. The exhibition of works produced by indigenous artists thus presents possibilities for writing other histories of art from different discursive and formal markers, expanding the limits of what the art object is, its effects and powers.

My aim in this presentation, as an anthropologist, curator, and curatorial coordinator of Indigenous histories, is to think about how the show can be situated in this constellation of contradictions of exhibiting living objects in spaces that have historically treated them as dead, disturbing some of their assumptions, but also helping to strengthen these other narratives and histories of art.

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This paper thinks curation and the curatorial through the appearance of the concept of "curación", an Amerindian Amazonian concept, in three anthropological projects with ethnographic collections in the Colombian Amazon. It will be argued the need to imagine the museum as a cosmopolitical embassy.

Paper Abstract:

Amongst several peoples of the Amerindian Amazon of Colombia (South America), "curación" refers to a way of thinking about and treating situations, actions and relations that bring disorder and discomfort to the world. During a fifteen year span (2008-2023), three anthropological projects with the Ethnographic Museum in the Colombian Amazon led to a profound reformulation of the curatorial through the intense dialogue with practices of "curación". The encounter of these concepts resulted not in a mere replacement of one by the other, neither in an expansion of one into the other. Rather, both terms were continually in an open-ended interaction that both generated and detonated bridges, regarding, for instance, the regime of value of the artifacts, their ontological status and the ways they should be exhibited. In this presentation, I will describe how in these museum projects "curación" and curation became entangled, and the possible outcomes of thinking with this concept for anthropology in and of museums. My main argument will be that through "curación" museums with ethnographic collections could understand themselves not only as contact zones, but primarily as cosmopolitical embassies. As such, museums could reclaim for them a key centrality in world-making projects beyond the framework of identity politics in contemporary multiculturalism, and opening therefore a new way of approaching experimentation with display in the museum scene.

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This paper interrogates the curatorial mode of research in Western art. Drawing on experiences as an ethnographer of Italian sculpture-making, I argue that, as anthropologists, we count on a long tradition of critical sensibility that could (and should) be brought into the spaces of the curatorial.

Paper Abstract:

This presentation examines somewhat uncertain or uncomfortable positions in the areas where the anthropological and curatorial meet. The ultimate aim is to raise fundamental practical questions about the role of anthropologists in the art worlds that we have become used to occupy. Drawing on my ethnographic research in a transnational art industry (the Apuan sculpture district in Italy), I will argue that a "critical anthropology of art" in the way that Marcus and Myers encouraged (1995) cannot only consider exoticization alone. As I will show, the Academia and Western art worlds of the 21st century demand a reconsideration James Clifford's "art-culture system" (1988), especially in the light of the unquestionably capitalistic nature of so-called "high" art (Mollona 2021). During my own work in a European art market, I was forced to anonymize, break the usual expectations of many actors in the art world, and present critical takes that would be of little use to those with commercial hopes. At times, this involved highly conflictual relations. My paper will argue that, as anthropologists, we count on a rich heritage of critical projects and sensibilities that could (and should) be brought into the spaces of the curatorial. This retention of the anthropological is even more pressing when it confronts a lukewarm, even cold or hostile reception. Should we be a cog in the machine or a stick in the wheel?

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The anthropological approach looking at artworks that were donate by individuals to a public museum (Museum of Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium) allows to add a social dimension to curated artworks and anchor their material history in their past and present social contexts and networks.

Paper Abstract:

The paper propose to present the first results of an on-going PhD research project at the crossroads of anthropology, museology, and cultural history (ULB) focusing on the specific public museum collection of modern and contemporary art of the Museum of Ixelles (Brussels, Belgium). The paper gives a concrete case of how the anthropological approach in a museal context answers the main challenges discussed in the panel and helps reimagine and reconfigure the perception one might have of artworks and public museum collections by deepdiving into the material history and provenance of objects that were donated by individuals. By diversifying the sources such as archives or interviews, by curating broader that artworks and including other medium such as correspondence, picture, audio or film material or by allowing news voices, from people extern to the disciplines, or from different communities, the anthropological approach reflects the social and human dimensions of objects, and anchor their material history in their past and present social contexts and networks.

Considering the curation in an art museum context, anthropology and curation as disciplines can enrich one another and propose new answers to their common challenges of the 21st century such as addressing to new publics, opening disciplines to new voices, engaging through collaborative networks that welcome multi-perspectivism and multi-sensoriality.

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In this presentation I will delve into the synergies and tensions that arise when anthropological and curatorial practices intersect, focusing on the field of vernacular arts. I will argue for the potential of the curatorial turn to amplify anthropology's impact in the artistic and public sphere.

Paper Abstract:

Working both as an anthropologist and a curator, I often witness the natural convergence of these two roles. However, specific instances reveal occasional tensions between these disciplines, prompting a critical reflection on my dual identity as anthropologist and curator. With a focus on the field of vernacular arts—a subject of my research and curatorial focus since 2016—in this presentation I aim to explore the interconnections between anthropology and the curatorial. Drawing from my firsthand experiences as a curator, I will delve into the benefits and challenges that arise when anthropological and curatorial practices intersect.

In parallel, I will advocate for the relevance of the curatorial to anthropology and to the broader field of artistic and cultural production, emphasizing its potential to enhance the discipline's engagement with the broader public. By sharing reflections from my curatorial work, I aspire to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the complexities inherent in merging these disciplines and underscore the potential of the curatorial turn to amplify anthropology's impact in the public sphere.

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The curatorial has proposed a shift from thinking about curating as the keeping and ordering of knowledge to the inquiry into possible other modes of telling stories. As such, it has become trans-disciplinary and offers new narrative modalities for thinking also anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

Departing from the study of independent curators of contemporary art in Germany and Italy, this paper analyses the ways in which the curatorial has become a multimodal, multidimensional field for the production and negotiation of narratives of world different from the universalist appropriation of culture prevalent in western museums of world. The latter form of storytelling, which I call worldly universalism, is rehabilitated across Europe through recourse to the liberal legacies of European anthropology. By contrast, curators engaging in practices of worldly situationism create forms of narration, of worldly storytelling, that begin from the situated and partial. For that reason, they share a post-modern anthropological sensitivity for anti-holism, partiality, and relationality. I unpack some of the possibilities and necessities of a humble anthropology that works alongside a minor curatorial grappling with world.

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This paper discusses the experience of an exhibition organised on the basis of ethnographic research in Chiapas. This exhibition, which was held in Mexico and also in Europe, provided an opportunity to bring together different cultural worlds and political cultures.

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This presentation relates to the exhibition “Atlas-Caracol. Contemporary multiple configurationsan” an itinerant exhibition between Mexico and Europe (2022-2024) bringing together the work of Maya and Zoque artists.

They construct, deconstruct and recontextualise the meaning of the symbol of the snail, based on its various translations into Mayan languages, allowing us to explore the multiple meanings of a complex sign with a long history among contemporary Mesoamerican peoples and its persistence in Maya-zoque thought, which refers to non-linear time, the flow of movement and life.

Initially conceived in collaboration with a cultural space in Chiapas, the exhibition was subsequently held in several locations in France, Belgium and Spain with the participation of groups and associations involved in supporting indigenous communities and the Zapatista struggle.

Taking part in the curation of this exhibition became a way of reconfiguring encounters with European groups campaigning to open up political spaces through art. We're going to retrace the trajectory of this exhibition in terms of the decolonial issues it raises, and the heuristic paths it has opened up for extending and augmenting the field experience from which it initially emerged.

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Through reflections on the author's partial engagement with contemporary artists in urban Mongolia, this paper reflects on 'the curatorial' as a method for anthropological research. Learning from artists, sensing, feeling, and caring become part of the curatorial repertoire of anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

This paper reflects on the author’s experience doing her doctoral fieldwork in Mongolia with citizens who identified themselves as contemporary artists. Based at an area-focused research institution in the UK where developing knowledge and understanding of a territorially or culturally defined place had historically been the epistemic norm, the author soon encountered the impossibility of representation as a fair or interesting way of framing her research upon commencing fieldwork and attempting to get to know her interlocutors, mainly highly critical and intellectual artists and cultural practitioners in urban Mongolia. As a young foreign woman conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork for the first time, embodied senses of stress and discomfort and real needs to safeguard one’s own personal safety necessitated constant reflexive responses to the behaviour, expressions, practices, and social, intellectual, and artistic interests of interlocutors and research participants, many in positions of much greater relative power within the field-site.

'Thank you for caring,' my research participants would say to me. Active participation and 'doing' things with the artists soon became my default mode of research. The curatorial in this sense, then, transcends traditional ideas of curating an exhibition, visual or otherwise, in the setting of a gallery or a museum, even though such an exercise could still entail a part of the curatorial practice. The curatorial became a way of learning from research participants, namely contemporary artists in urban Mongolia, who prefer to 'just do it' before over conceptualising their ideas, and invited the author to share their art making lives.

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This paper draws on a body of ethnographic work conducted with Contemporary Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Artists across the Americas to undo_to_do the anthropological project with regards to spatial politics and the inclusion of dissident bodies in public spaces.

Paper Abstract:

If we work with Irit Rogoff's distinction between ‘curating’ as a specific and one-off event, and ‘the curatorial’, as a form of expanded practice, then Anthropology's remit with regards to knowledge production and pedagogy is well established. How we might conceive of the discipline's ambition with regards to spatial politics and the inclusion of dissident bodies in public spaces, however, is somewhat less clear. This paper seeks to put forward this question with reference to a body of ethnographic work conducted with Contemporary Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Artists across the Americas. Such work connects to a broader ambition, ideally to be addressed through collaborative discussion: undoing_to_do Anthropology via a revitalization of methodological practice, a renewal of a 20th Century discipline contextualized by emergent subjectivities in times of crisis.