This curated exhibition was part of the Association of Social Anthropologists' annual conference in 2016, held at Durham University.
The exhibition showcased the relationship between drawing and anthropology and displayed visual works by Arthur Bernard Deacon, Carol Hendrickson, Tim Ingold, Robert Layton, Marion Wettstein, Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Manuel Joao Ramos, Michael Taussig and Alfred Gell.
From the diagrammatic illustrations of Alfred Gell to the musing offered by Michael Taussig’s drawings and collages, to the more recent shift towards a graphic anthropology by Portuguese anthropologist Manuel João Ramos, there has been a longstanding engagement with the medium of drawing for anthropology, as a means of both description and revelation. This exhibition brings together anthropologists through the marks they make and the lines they inscribe. Ranging from visual field notes made in situ to more sustained visual images that bear witness to the interstices between art and anthropology, this exhibition will chart some of the more recent developments between anthropology and drawing. Understood in a more expansive sense to include marks made on a surface, diagrams, map, and visual note taking, the aim of the exhibition will be to explore the visuality of ethnographic fieldwork, the importance of aesthetic forms for observing momentary sensations and securing fleeting ideas and moving of from this, how these impressions and recordings develop beyond the field and offer imaginative exposition and experimental speculation on the future..
