Mirela Tanta & Smaranda Ursuleanu • The Autoethnographic Turn
The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA) at the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași (UNAGE Iași), organised, on 2 June 2022, the talk entitled The Autoethnographic Turn, featuring art historian Mirela Tanta (Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois, USA) and visual artist Smaranda Ursuleanu (Iași, Romania), and moderated by Professor Cristian Nae.
What is autoethnography, and how do contemporary artists, curators, social scientists, and art historians use it in their research and artistic practices? Autoethnography is defined as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience in order to understand cultural experience” (Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner, “Autoethnography: An Overview”, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2010). In other words, practising autoethnography involves drawing on personal and subjective experience when conducting research or making art. It is also a phenomenological enquiry that brings the body and its unique, and therefore personal, experiences to the forefront of research. Autoethnography allows for multiple voices and challenges the myth of objectivity or Truth with a capital T. Instead, it affirms that our ability to understand others is conditioned by our willingness to understand ourselves.
Mirela Tanta’s interest in autoethnography within art history stems from a desire to connect personal history with official history. She invites artists and the public to consider the following questions and statements as starting points for reflecting on their own artistic practices and research methods: Why now? Why is autoethnography such a recent method? Are there limitations to the use of autoethnography? Autoethnography also involves “relational ethics” (researchers do not exist in a vacuum)? Does autoethnography offer a solution to the crisis of representation? Is it possible for research to be both rigorous and emotionally engaging?
Mirela Tanta is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the National University of Arts Bucharest, where she is conducting research into contemporary artistic and curatorial practices addressing women’s reproductive rights in Romania. She is also an Associate Professor of Art History at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, USA. She completed her PhD at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), focusing on modern and contemporary art, Socialist Realism, and gender studies. Prior to joining Millikin University, she taught at Loyola University Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, North Central College, and the University of Illinois Chicago.
Her interest in the ways in which underrepresented, ephemeral, and personal art objects can empower individuals to become producers of knowledge informs her poetry, research, and teaching. She has received awards and fellowships from the University of Illinois Chicago (Institute for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship and Dean’s Scholar Award), the Mellon Foundation through the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) (Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources), and the ArtsLink programme in New York (the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa).
Smaranda Ursuleanu graduated in Mural Art from the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design at the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași (UNAGE Iași). In 2016, she undertook an Erasmus+ mobility at Novia University of Applied Sciences, within the Fine Arts programme in Jakobstad, Finland, followed by a further Erasmus+ mobility in 2021 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Conceptual and Contextual Practices, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In her artistic practice, Smaranda Ursuleanu transforms social stereotypes and taboos concerning identity and sexuality into subversive, often feminist visual representations, which she multiplies and translates into space through a variety of techniques.
Selected exhibitions include Lay Me Down Across the Lines, Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara (2019); Libidoland 2, apARTe Gallery, Iași (2019); ppm#4 copy art show, Aici Acolo Pop Up Gallery, Cluj-Napoca (2019); Soon This Body Will Be Still, MATCA Art Space, Cluj-Napoca (2019); Common Space – Images, Stories, Voices, Art Encounters Foundation, ISHO House, Timișoara (2018); Where Do We Go from Here?, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest (2018); and Art Encounters Biennial. Life: A User’s Manual, 2nd edition, Timișoara (2017).
Talk coordinated by Professor Cristian Nae.