Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper will build on the ongoing participatory art practice and the ethnography conducted among female carpet weavers in Northern Iran. In the first part of the paper, the agency of artisans and carpets will be examined by considering the intersection of age, gender and class. But not restricted to it: under certain criteria, the state is facilitating artisans, with loans and insurances, in order to persuade them to weave and preserve their weaving methods and motifs. The state project of preservation of carpet-weaving as a “national cultural heritage” will be scrutinized to address the question of how are the agency of persons and things considered or shaped behind a certain kind of intentionality (Gell 1998)? In the second part, I will explain the method of participatory art as an action research to situate the project in contemporary art’s contextual, situational and communal nature. Thus, the project’s processes brings the matter of agency into open, stimulate discussion and reinterpretation among artist, artisans and third parties (like carpet dealers, customers and visitors in national and international spaces). Subsequently, it raises the important ethical dimension of the participatory art with the intervention in the aesthetic forms of the female artisans. Where should the boundaries between the artist as a creator, and the artist as a participant be established?