African Art, Interviews, Narratives
Bodies of Knowledge at Work

Joanna Grabski (Author), Carol Magee (Author), Patrick McNaughton (Contributions by), Joseph F. Jordan (Contributions by), Silvia Forni (Contributions by), Akinbode Akinbiyi (Contributions by), Kim Miller (Contributions by), Andrea E. Frohne (Contributions by), Mary Jo Arnoldi (Contributions by), Christine Mullen Kreamer (Contributions by), Allan deSouza (Contributions by)

9780253006912

Paperback / softback, published 28 May 2013

208 pages, 12 b&w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.295 kg

"This book enhances our appreciation for interviews as a research tool and cautions us to use this tool with greater awareness of its power to shape our subjects."—Victoria Rovine, University of Florida
"African Art, Interviews, Narratives . . . is a highly reflective collection of essays about the work of constructing art history out of interviews. Designed to unsettle and open up the relationship between interviews and scholarship, it speaks to the work of anthropology by aiming to better understand the nature of the interview process itself, how we produce and convey meanings from interviews and related documents.  While it will be of particular interest to anthropologists working as museum curators, it will be equally useful to any professional whose craft largely depends upon interviews."—Leonardo Reviews
"In these essays, one hears the narratives and learns the perspectives of a diverse group of people that greatly illuminate both meaning and intent."—African Studies Review
"African Art, Interviews, Narratives provides scholars the chance to reexamine the role of the interviewer, interlocutor, and art historian when making printed text from recorded interviews."—Oral History Review

Joanna Grabski and Carol Magee bring together a compelling collection that shows how interviews can be used to generate new meaning and how connecting with artists and their work can transform artistic production into innovative critical insights and knowledge. The contributors to this volume include artists, museum curators, art historians, and anthropologists, who address artistic production in a variety of locations and media to question previous uses of interview and provoke alternative understandings of art.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Work of Interviews
Carol Magee and Joanna Grabski
1. Talking to People about Art
Patrick McNaughton
2. Ghostly Stories: Interviews with Artists in Dakar and the Productive Space around Absence
Joanna Grabski
3. Can the Artist Speak? Hamid Kachmar's Subversive Redemptive Art of Resistance
Joseph Jordan
4. Photography, Narrative Interventions, and (Cross) Cultural Representations
Carol Magee
5. Narrating the Artist: Seyni Camara and the Multiple Constructions of the Artistic Persona
Silvia Forni
6. Interview—Akinbode Akinbiyi
Akinbode Akinbiyi
7. Inter-Weaving Narratives of Art and Activism: Sandra Kriel's Heroic Women
Kim Miller
8. Politics of Narrative at the African Burial Ground in NYC: The Final Monument
Andrea E. Frohne
9. Who Owns the Past: Constructing an Art History of a Malian Masquerade
Mary Jo Arnoldi
10. Framing Practices: Artists' Voices and the Power of Self-Representation
Christine Mullen Kreamer
11. Undisciplined Knowledge
Allan deSouza and Allyson Purpura
Appendix: Interlocutors
Contributors
Index