29 Apr 2025
Episode 45. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Florentina Manuel Martínez with Michele A. Feder-Nadoff and Claudia Rocha Valverde
Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Each episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring.
Series 3, Episode 7 of Artery features Florentina Manuel Martínez with Michele A. Feder-Nadoff and Claudia Rocha Valverde
Florentina Manuel Martínez is a textile artist originally from the state of Veracruz, in the municipality of Chicontepec, in the community of Ateno. She is a Náhuatl language speaker. Currently she is living in Tamaletom (the municipality of Tancanhuitz, in the state of San Luis Potosí, México). Florentina is married to a Tének flyer man of Tamaletom. (Tének is an Indigenous group of Mexico and flying refers to the traditional ritual dance of prehispanic origins.) Florentina has lived in Tamaleton for 18 years and has learned much about the Tének culture.
Michele A. Feder-Nadoff is an artist and anthropologist whose practice and research is concerned with the meaning of making [https://mfedernadoff.academia.edu].
Her longterm ethnography in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán, México began in 1997 initiated by her apprenticeship with a master coppersmith, Maestro Jesús Pérez Ornelas. This led to her founding the non-profit Cuentos Foundation, becoming a Fulbright Scholar and cultural anthropologist, PhD, El Colegio de Michoacán. Her critical aesthetics integrates onto-epistemology, performance, and phenomenology with multimodal and collaborative methods designed to decolonize education, art and anthropology. Her artwork is included in private and public collections worldwide. Recent publications include her edited volume, Performing Craft in Mexico: Artisans, Aesthetics and the Power of Translation, 2022, Lexington (Bloomsbury Press), her monograph An Anthropology of Making in Santa Clara del Cobre: Presence of Absence, 2024, Palgrave, and numerous book chapters and articles. She is the assistant editor of the Journal of Embodied Research and an independent scholar, translator, curator, video-producer, lecturer and a multimodal workshop facilitator.
Claudia Rocha Valverde, PhD in Art History is a professor and investigator at El Colegio de San Luis (COLSAN) in the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Center in Mexico. [https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=aZ-M7XMAAAAJ&hl=es]
Currently, Claudia is the academic liaison of the CASA COLSAN Xilitla Project. Her fieldwork is in the region of Huasteca in the state of San Luis Potosi, where she has carried out research on contemporary traditions of pre-Hispanic origins. In particular, she has specialized in how the knowledge of Indigenous Nahua and Tének women is manifested in the history and symbolism of their clothing, which they wear today in ceremonial contexts related to the concept of Madre Tierra, Mother Earth, which reflects the natural environment in which they live.
For more (and the Spanish version) click here
Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.
Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.
