Paper short abstract

This article reflects on my experiences, as both an anthropologist and a painter, of depicting the portraits of volunteer models, in various public settings, as part of a curatorial experiment on the process doing visual anthropology today.

Paper long abstract

This article reflects on my experiences of painting the portraits of volunteer models, including other anthropologists, in various museum and other public settings. As a social anthropologist and a painter, I often paint the portraits of individuals whilst 'out in the field' as another way of doing ethnography. In the process, the model and I get to know each other better, and the portrait emerges as a collaboration, and as an alternative form of (visual) thick description. In recent years, I have demonstrated this pratice publicly, as a way to invite more people to directly witness the process of depicting a live human-being on canvas and think about its implications for anthropology. This article discusses these experiences in light of the current transformation of anthropology as a co-production of knowledge utilizing interdisciplinary approaches including art, and in the context of public settings, including museums displaying traditional and conventional representational forms. I reflect on how the experiment possibly emerges as an aesthetic performance in its own right, bringing the acts of doing anthropology and art together.