A Review of Francisco Martínez, Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects: Exhibitions as a Research Method. London: UCL Press, 2021, 202 pp.

Abstract

This book is a study of the curatorial experience as an example of experimental participatory practices in anthropology, in which the anthropologist is an active participant in the field and its co-organiser. In seven chapters, the researcher of materiality Francisco Martínez describes and problematises transdisciplinary collaborations in the preparation and curation of the exhibition, exploring their potential and limitations. What happens when an anthropologist becomes a curator and applies anthropological imagination and reflection on modes of knowledge production as a method of organising exhibition space? How do material objects and the connections between them form politically charged assemblages, and how can the reconfiguration of these connections generate change in the social field? What knowledge, assumptions, material conditions and skills make transdisciplinary collaborations possible and productive? Martínez explores these and other questions, particularly focusing on the productivity of tensions in curatorial practice and demonstrating the heuristic potential of the exhibition as a space for participatory knowledge production. Here, objects operate not as illustrations to a predetermined narrative, but as epistemic devices that provoke questions and generate new meanings and connections. The book is written on materials collected by the author during the preparation and realisation of the exhibition Objects of Attention (Tallinn, 2019) and includes a rich description of the author’s curatorial experience and his interactions with museum staff, designers, artists and visitors. Martínez’s work contributes to experimental ethnography, which attempts to rethink and transcend subject-object relations in anthropological research, pushing the methodological boundaries of the discipline. It will be of interest to anyone interested in curatorial experience, ethnographies of transdisciplinary collaboration, experimental practices and methods, and collaborations with artists and designers.