Between ethnography and material culture
Guided tour by Ewa Klekot
Guided tour through Zofia Rydet's exhibition, photo by Bartosz Stawiarski
After seeing the “Zofia Rydet. Record, 1978 – 1990” exhibition together with the participants, Ewa Klekot will ask why Zofia Rydet called her project a “sociological record” and not an “ethnographic record”.
She will talk about her understanding of ethnography as a way of approaching reality based on the tradition of the “ethnographic method” in social sciences and argue that the latter name would have been more suitable for the artist's most important project. This perspective will then allow the participants to take a careful look at the strong presence of “material culture” in the Record, and therefore at the prevalence of objects in peasant culture.
Ewa Klekot - anthropologist and translator, teacher at the University of Warsaw's Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the School of Form in Poznań. She is interested in anthropological research of heritage and museums, and anthropology of art and design, especially the social construction of folk art and primitive art, the material aspect of objects qualified as design, art, heritage or museum exhibits, and the issues of the socially differentiating potential of art (kitsch). Member of the editorial board of “Ethnologia Europaea” and the editorial office of “Zbiór Wiadomości do Antropologii Muzealnej”.
