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At the Crossroads Between Art and Anthropology: When the Artist Becomes an Ethnographer and Art Meets Life

When Jimmy Nelson published Before They Pass Away (2013), his monumental photographic series dedicated to Indigenous peoples around the world, it sparked contrasting reactions. On the one hand, images of extraordinary formal beauty that captured the imagination of a global audience; on the other, fierce criticism from anthropologists and Indigenous activists who accused the photographer of perpetuating colonial stereotypes and aestheticizing living cultures, reducing them to tableaux vivants.

This controversy perfectly highlights the border zone in which art and anthropology move today: adjacent territories, with sometimes overlapping methodologies, but often unresolved tensions over fundamental issues of representation, authenticity, and power.

While Nelson—whom we admired in the exhibition “Humanity” at Palazzo Reale in Milan between 2023 and 2024—defended himself by stating that his work aimed to celebrate and preserve cultures at risk of disappearing, his critics emphasized how the aesthetic approach favored beauty and spectacle at the expense of the cultural complexity of the represented subjects.


The debate remains open: Can a work of art also have ethnographic value? Where is the boundary between cultural documentation and aesthetic appropriation?

A different approach is taken by Anthony Luvera, who spends years building meaningful relationships with homeless people on the streets of London. He does not merely photograph them but invites them to co-create, providing them with cameras and teaching self-portrait techniques. The result is Assisted Self-Portraits (2002–2011), a series where the boundaries between subject and author dissolve.

What might seem like a simple photography project reveals, upon closer inspection, a deeply ethnographic approach: prolonged immersion, relationship-building, attention to power dynamics, and co-production of knowledge.

Raul Ortega Ayala, a Mexican artist, spent three years immersing himself in various work environments—from gardening to restaurants, from offices to funeral services—explicitly adopting what he calls an “anthropological approach.” In Food for Thought (2009–2010), after nine months of immersion in London restaurants, he faithfully recreated meals consumed by historical figures in their last moments, turning a quasi-archaeological research project into an art installation.


These artists are not simply “borrowing” anthropological methodologies: they are redefining what it means to be an artist in the contemporary world. No longer isolated creators in their studios, but engaged observers who immerse themselves in the social fabric, produce knowledge, and generate experiences that challenge traditional boundaries of art.

Art as an Ethnographic Space

What makes these artistic projects so close to anthropology?First of all, the temporal dimension. Like the ethnographer who spends months or years in the field, these artists dedicate themselves to long, patient processes where time becomes an essential material of the work.

Suzanne Lacy, for example, with her The Oakland Projects (1991–2001), spent a decade working with African American and Latino youth in Oakland, addressing social issues through participatory art.


Then, there is the focus on relationships as a constitutive element of the work. Sophie Calle in The Address Book (1983) randomly found a phone book and interviewed all the contacts to create an indirect portrait of the owner—a kind of ethnographic inquiry transformed into an artistic experiment.

Even the concept of “fieldwork” is reinterpreted. Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo in Transit (since 1996) documents his border-crossing experiences by creating fake passports and giant stamps that materialize the experience of the migrant, turning border control into his own “ethnographic field.”


Two Traditions Compared: Convergences and Divergences

Anthropology and art have seemingly different histories and goals. The former arose as a scientific project aimed at the systematic understanding of human cultures; the latter as a creative expression with aesthetic goals.

Yet, both have evolved in ways that made today’s convergence possible.

Anthropology has abandoned the positivist illusion of an “objective” documentation of alterity, recognizing the always partial and situated nature of ethnographic knowledge. The “crisis of representation” that began in the 1980s with Writing Culture (1986) by James Clifford and George Marcus opened the discipline to more experimental, reflective, and dialogic forms.


In parallel, contemporary art experienced a “social turn,” moving away from the object as a finished product toward experiences, relationships, and processes. Nicolas Bourriaud, with his influential Relational Aesthetics (2002), theorized this art as one that takes as its theoretical horizon “the sphere of human interactions and its social context, rather than the affirmation of an autonomous and private symbolic space.”


This convergence is not without friction.

From the art world come critiques about the supposed superficiality with which some artists adopt ethnographic methodologies without the necessary reflexivity. As anthropologist George Marcus provocatively asked: “What happens when artists do ethnography?” The implied answer is that they often lack the methodological rigor and analytical depth of the anthropological discipline.

Conversely, anthropology can seem overly academic, trapped in expressive conventions that limit its ability to communicate lived experience. Artist and anthropologist Jennifer Deger highlighted how traditional academic writing often fails to convey fundamental dimensions of social life: sensory perception, emotions, atmospheres.


Another problematic issue is the ethical dimension. Who can represent whom? With what authority? To whom do the collected stories belong? While anthropology has developed rigorous ethical protocols (albeit still debated), the art world operates with different rules, raising questions about responsibility toward the involved communities.

The commercialization of artistic work adds further dilemmas. When artist Renzo Martens created a cocoa plantation in Congo as a participatory art piece (Institute for Human Activities, 2012), intending to redistribute the profits of the contemporary art system, it sparked both enthusiasm and fierce criticism over the potential instrumentalization of poverty.


Despite—or perhaps thanks to—these tensions, highly innovative experiences are emerging. The “ethnographic conceptualism” proposed by PhD Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov represents an attempt to conduct ethnography as conceptual art, using artistic strategies to generate social situations that become objects of inquiry.

One interesting example is Elsewhereness by Anders Weberg and Robert Willim, which combines digital art and experimental ethnography. The work presents itself as an interactive audiovisual installation exploring the feeling of “elsewhere”—that ambiguous and elusive sensation that arises in front of unknown or culturally other places.

Through sounds, images, and immersive environments, visitors are invited to reflect on what it means to perceive something as exotic or familiar, thus generating a sensory experience that also becomes a tool of anthropological inquiry.

Or again, the Museum of Non Participation by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, a nomadic entity that interrogates forms of passive resistance and non-participation as a political strategy, collecting stories through performances, films, and installations.


The Border Zone

If anthropology offers analytical tools and ethnographic sensitivity, art contributes with its power to evoke, provoke, and engage the senses.

As anthropologist Arnd Schneider suggests, the meeting of these disciplines can generate spaces of “reciprocal appropriation” where both emerge transformed. Anthropology is enriched by new expressive languages and public engagement methods, while art gains analytical depth and awareness of complex intercultural dynamics.

In a world of knowledge that is increasingly complex and interconnected, perhaps it is precisely in the interdisciplinary interstices that we can find the most suitable tools to interpret and respond to contemporary challenges.


Books and Theoretical Texts

  • Bourriaud, N. (2002). Relational Aesthetics. Milan: Postmedia Books.

  • Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.) (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Schneider, A., & Wright, C. (Eds.) (2010). Anthropology and Art Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Art Projects and Works

Online Articles and Contributions

  • Artuu.it. From Classical Definitions to Artificial Intelligence: Toward a Relational Ontology of Art.

  • Artuu.it. The Value of Participatory Aesthetics for the Community.

  • Survival International (2013). Jimmy Nelson: Before They Pass Away – Criticism and Response

 
 
 

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