The Sorcerer’s Burden

All of the artists in this exhibition address these issues around culture, identity, race, and colonialism in direct and indirect ways in their work.

— Heather Pesanti

This expanded publication accompanies The Contemporary Austin’s 2019 exhibition The Sorcerer’s Burden: Contemporary Art and the Anthropological Turn. Based on observations in the art world, as well as curator Heather Pesanti’s own academic background in cultural anthropology, this group exhibition and book steers away from scientific observations about cultures and the work of artists already well associated with this terrain, instead offering a fresh perspective through artwork that is experimental, exploratory, and reflective of the present day.

Sourcing its title from the literary work of “ethnofiction” The Sorcerer’s Burden: The Ethnographic Saga of a Global Family (2016) by American cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller, the book features works that are alternately imaginative, humorous, satirical, dark, melancholy, playful, enchanting, and mischievous. Representing a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, the artworks share a commonality not only in their allusions to elements of anthropology, but in their exploration of the interplay between fact and fiction, ultimately questioning whether any field, media, or genre might propose to convey “truth.”