Doing fieldwork in an acrylic hell: mediations between personhood, art and ethnography in a Thai mural painting

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, I explore how my scholarly training as an anthropologist informs the way I produce and understand what I do as a traditional Thai temple muralist. Thinking about personhood and context in the process of temple mural painting forges a new reading of murals as ethnographic texts that weave together diverse narrative content, fictional moments and experiential threads. The process of painting temple murals are, like the ethnographic works anthropologists build, a space through which multiple dialogues are encountered, referenced and negotiated. Using anthropology to think about my art practice in a Thai Buddhist temple outside of Thailand, I show how traditional Thai mural artists did not just paint scenes rich in historical and mythical meaning but were (and continue to be) shaped by the audiences who view their intricate and colourful creations. Mural painting, I conclude, is ethnography-in-process. Mural painters like anthropologists, constantly reflect on their art practice as a text sans words, in a dialectical process of entangled agencies as they spin tales of pasts, presents and futures in vivid hues on the walls of Buddhist temples.