Heather Pesanti’s lecture will explore the complex relationship between contemporary art and anthropology, a theme addressed by artists, curators, and scholars since the 1990s, and one that shapes the subject of The Contemporary Austin’s forthcoming exhibition The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn. Anthropology, or the study of human society and culture, can provide insight and subject matter for artists interested in the interpretation of identity, questions of cultural appropriation, or the social and philosophical critiques that bridge these fields. With considerations around cultural ownership and place at the forefront of international discussions today, The Sorcerer’s Burden aims to offer a fresh perspective through artwork that is experimental, exploratory, and reflective of the present.
Taking its title from a novel by the American cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller—The Sorcerer’s Burden: The Ethnographic Saga of a Global Family—the exhibition features artworks that are alternately imaginative, humorous, satirical, melancholy, enchanting, and mischievous. The allusion to magic and sorcery in this exhibition’s title also nods to the 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la terre (“Magicians of the earth”) in Paris. Curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, this important early presentation included both Western and non-Western works and used the word “magician” in place of “artist”—suggesting porous boundaries between art and other endeavors and attributing agency to artist’s individual production. Here, the exhibition aims to tease out challenging issues related to race, colonialism, “primitivism,” identity, religion and politics, as well as the potential for new insight in the unexpected intersections. Encompassing a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, video, sound and performance and highlighting new commissions alongside site-specific recent works, The Sorcerer’s Burden explores the interplay between fact and fiction, questioning whether any field, media, or genre can convey “truth.”
The Sorcerer’s Burden consists of eleven artists occupying The Contemporary Austin’s two sites, the downtown Jones Center on Congress Avenue and the fourteen-acre Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria: Ed Atkins (born 1982 in Oxford, United Kingdom), Nuotama Bodomo (born 1988 in Accra, Ghana), Theo Eshetu (born 1958 in London, United Kingdom), Cameron Jamie (born 1969 in Los Angeles, California), Kapwani Kiwanga (born 1978 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), Marie Lorenz (born 1973 in Twentynine Palms, California), Nathan Mabry (born 1978 in Durango, Colorado), Ruben Ochoa (born 1974 in Oceanside, California), Dario Robleto (born 1972 in San Antonio, Texas), Shimabuku (born 1969 in Kobe, Japan), and Julia Wachtel (born 1956 in New York City, New York). The exhibition installation is organized into four themes: Ritual, Magic, Myth—highlighting works that explore history and culture through the lens of storytelling, ritual, and spiritual practice; Farther Afield—a nod to the writer, curator, critic, and activist Lucy R. Lippard’s 2010 essay of the same name, featuring outdoor projects that revolve around site-specificity, fieldwork, community, and performance; The Spyglass of Anthropology—focusing on works that offer critiques of culture through self-exploration and identity, inspired by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston; and Things—taking its title from Bill Brown’s 2001 “Thing Theory” and featuring works focused on material culture and appropriation.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color, 272-page catalogue, co-published by The Contemporary Austin and Radius Books, Santa Fe, including a scholarly essay by Pesanti and guest contributions by Robert Storr, David Odo and Julia V. Hendrickson. The catalogue also features a section titled Farther Afield—named for the essay by Lippard—with images, text, research, and artwork contributed by each artist and representing their inspiration and influence.
Heather Pesanti is Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Contemporary Austin, where she has organized exhibitions and commissions of work by John Bock, Carol Bove, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Anya Gallaccio, Lionel Maunz, Rodney McMillian, Wangechi Mutu, Monika Sosnowska, Robert Therrien, and Marianne Vitale, as well as the thematic exhibitions Strange Pilgrims and The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn. Forthcoming projects include solo exhibitions of Nicole Eisenman, Deborah Roberts, and Torbjørn Rødland. From 2008 to 2013, Pesanti was Curator of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and, prior to that, the Assistant Curator of Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pesanti received her MA in Art History from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, MSc in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and BA from the University of Pennsylvania.