Susan Ossman
I am an artist and an anthropologist. On a perfect day I write in the morning, paint in the afternoon and do fieldwork in a dance studios or around the dinner table. In the studio theories take form with the movement of a brush across a canvas. Those same gestures stream words on a page. Texts, or colors or ideas can flow gently or have sharp edges. I think of works of art or texts as bearing witness to particular aspects or moments in these flows of discovery. Movement and light are central to my lyrical aesthetic.
I became an abstract expressionist while studying at UC Berkeley. I also developed an interest in the concept of the "avant-garde" and colonial histories that led me to Paris and on to Morocco. I studied how images and politics are intertwined, first in the city on television and in the streets of Casablanca, then in beauty salons there, and in Paris and Cairo. My own life of migration led me to collect nd write about the stories of people who had lived in multiple countries.
Paintings, books, installations and performances are some of the outcomes of these “waves” of inquiry, which have also led to films, articles, a play. and several collaborative projects, notably the ongoing Moving Matters Traveling Workshop, a global collective that develops on-site programs on migration internationally.
My art has been exhibited and performed in the USA, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Spain, the UK and Tunisia. My research crosses scholarship and art. I have taught in France, the UK, Morocco and the USA. I recently moved to a new position at New York University Abu Dhabi.
I write about how I weave art and ethnography together, in my studio and with others in theaters, galleries and public plazas in my new book Shifting Worlds, Shaping Fieldwork, A Memoir of Anthropology and Art