Artists in the Field: Between Art and Anthropology

Abdel Hernandez is a Cuban artist, art critic, and cultural theorist. His work has evoked that of anthropologists, as in his performances, installations, and experiences in remote rural communities in Cuba, and in his exhibits/installations in the milieu of the everyday life of the urban poor. The various performances and installations were meant to explore the concept of evocation and its relation to ethical practice. In some cases artists developed ethnographies of themselves using installation as a spatialization of self-narratives and critique. While describing the relationship between aesthetic quality and ideological tendency, Walter Benjamin in his 1934 essay, ‘Author as Producer’, calls for artists of the left of the side with the proletariat. However, this affiliation is problematic, because it suggests form versus content, political tendency versus aesthetic quality.