"Nani Ghar / नानी घर Images meant the truth; in our school textbooks, of our childhood and definitely of the world beyond; or so we believed. The authority of images as truth was only challenged when I started to make my own (images and meanings). To make my images was to build my world, the autonomy in authorship was liberating but soon, one realizes that this autonomy is a consequence of privilege.Image-making has become an integral part of our lives. We are photographing and filming our food, our friends/family and also ourselves constantly. One can accept this as a practice of creating and maintaining an archive, a live archive that will influence our understanding of our past and hence ourselves. We are heavily into the creation of our image not just for today, but for the years and generations to come. How can this archive then be read and does it communicate a sense of our identity? My grandmother and I ask each other where we are from, individually and collectively, as citizens of the world. We reflect together, she with her shard of mirror and I, with mine. The only scope for mistake in this process is to believe that our shard can reflect the whole truth."

"Hello, I’m Savyasachi and I record everyday videos, sounds and images. Sometimes I make films out of them and sometimes I just play them back to myself. I am primarily interested in the everyday mundane and its reflections/influences on the lives of people across generations and cultures. At present, I am interested in exploring the relationships between photography and film as a medium, as a mode of representation and as a form of public archive/documentation."
"Hello, I am Harsha Menon and I make films and sound pieces for the cinema and gallery. As an artist and anthropologist, I am interested in post-colonial theory, social practice, sonic ethnography, and transnational feminisms. I teach contemporary art, film and visual anthropology. My present project explores friendship as an aesthetic at a Buddhist nunnery."

ANTART FieldWorks #10: Savyasachi Anju Prabir and Harsha Menon

In this talk, Pamela Cevallos and Sandra Rozental will discuss their projects on replication and heritage in Ecuador and Mexico, and the dialogues between art and anthropology. Pamela will present the context of “Atlas 1892. Fieldnotes”, a project featured in the Field/works exhibition, which is part of her research as an artist and anthropologist in the community of La Pila (Manabí, Ecuador) on collecting practices, looting and production of crafts based on pre-Hispanic archaeological objects. She is interested in the hermeneutical and political potential of replication as a strategy that destabilizes originality and expands the idea of authenticity.
During this conversation, Sandra will present her work based on ethnographic research in San Miguel Coatlinchan, the source community of one of ancient Mexico´s most emblematic monuments that was forcefully taken to the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City over five decades ago. Through this case study, she explores the relationship between patrimony and replication — often thought about as resulting from opposite and irreconcilable forces — to show how they work in tandem in Latin American contexts. She will also discuss her current projects that are located at the crossroads between art, visual culture, and anthropology.

 

Pamela Cevallos is an artist, anthropologist, and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. Her work explores the social life of things, the practices of collecting and exhibition and the uses of the archive. She has developed projects related to the history of national museums in Ecuador and the process of heritage making during the twentieth century. Her current PhD research focuses on the appropriations and uses of the pre-Hispanic through reproduction strategies.

Sandra Rozental is an anthropologist and an Associate Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. Her work focuses on the social worlds created by and around patrimony, namely pre-Hispanic material culture in contemporary Mexico. She has collaborated with various artists and curated exhibitions on issues related to patrimony, museums, politics of display, collections and replicas, and co-directed the feature documentary film The Absent Stone (2013).

ANTART FieldWorks #2: Pamela Cevallos and Sandra Rozental

For anthropologists and artists “doing fieldwork” in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, or performing arts are at the heart of their work, extending the established anthropological interest in writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. This exhibition presents works by anthropologists and artists who break disciplinary boundaries, and whose practice foregrounds experimental, and open approaches to the theme “field/works”. 

This series is curated by Jen Clarke and Maxime Le Calvé. We intend to provide a new space for discussion around and across the thematic of the virtual exhibition "Field/Works": https://antart.easaonline.org/ 

All members of ANTART (EASA) are all invited to attend. If you wish to participate in a particular talk with a short paper (5 minutes) which would resonate with the topic or — even better — with the artwork presented in that talk, please get in touch with us.

ANTART FieldWorks #2: Pamela Cevallos and Sandra Rozental

ANT ART

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