The Autoethnographer As Migrant Artist: Practicing Art And Ethnogrphy On The Research Field
The Autoethnographer As Migrant Artist: Practicing Art And Ethnogrphy On The Research Field

Author(s): Persefoni Myrtsou
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Autoethnographer; migrant artist; art; ethnogrphy; research;
Summary/Abstract: In this paper I talk about my autoethnographic research as both a migrant artist and an ethnographerworking on the subject of artists’ migration. In particular, I elucidate the connections between myartistic practice and ethnographic research as they have complemented each other during my fieldwork.Such connections have been first thematised by Hal Foster (1995). Foster acknowledges the“ethnographic turn” in contemporary art, which encouraged socially-engaged forms of art. At the sametime, however, Foster finds the fascination of artists with anthropology and the everydayunsubstantiated, and deems related approaches to be “pseudo-ethnographic”. He argues that someartists use “ethnographic self-fashioning” and “self-othering” in order to benefit from being associatedwith a fashionable disadvantaged minority culture or group. So, for Foster the artist as ethnographerappears as an impossible position to occupy.

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