Anthropology & Photography 2010 – 2016

Abstract

"Malysse, the anthropologist-transvestite (2010-2016)" is an art project that is intimately associated to my practice as an anthropologist. I have been collecting ethnic clothing and other items of what we call material culture ever since I began teaching textile ethnography at the University of São Paulo (USP/ BRAZIL). By studying different ways of dressing and being exotic, I have quickly felt the urge to go native and to break the anthropological taboo of becoming the Other.  By temporarily entering others’ appearances, I have become a transcultural transvestite; the first anthropologist of a new category; a kind of postcolonial cultural chameleon… Appearance confronts the theme of ambiguity and transgression with the lightness of irony and play, denoting a fascinating perspective for the collaboration of Art and Anthropology during this new millennium. Disguises, masks, ironic self-portraits, false pretenses, scientific fiction, deceptive perception, and the manipulation of reality are deceitful transgressions that deform reality in order to escape the traditional rules of representation in Anthropology and Contemporary Art.