Marcel Reyes - Cortez is a Visual Anthropologist living and working in London.
As a visual anthropologist and artist, Marcel’s current research explores the fusion between photographic practice and academic research in an attempt to promote and enrich the collaboration and exchange between them.
Selected as International Artist in Residence between Sep-Dec 2018 at Taipei Artist Village, Treasure Hill, Taiwan.
【2018 AIR ANNOUNCEMENT】Results of 2018 Open Call for AIR Taipei: Taipei Artist Village
Photography in social research and writing - warsztaty
Workshop and master-class, organised by the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw and Stowarzyszenie “Pracownia Etnograficzna”, June 2015.
Abstract
“Cemeteries could be regarded as non-social spaces due to a believed negligible amount of daily social activity between the living, the dead and the space. At the same time, the spaces of the dead are regarded as spiritually charged, dangerous and even polluted. My paper suggests that the spaces of the dead, such as the cemeteries of Mexico City, are clear examples of dynamically active memory-making spaces in which the dead are daily revered, socialised and memorialised through a combination of secular and religious contemporary funerary practices, the daily interaction between the living, the dead, the ánima and material culture. The paper analyses the phenomenon, socio-cultural and political conditions of the objectification of the dead in the internal and external spaces of the cemetery. The paper includes the investigation of life histories of its workers, mourners and daily visitors in order to explore why various communities in Mexico City have embraced and revered the materialisation and objectification of the dead such as the following of the Santa Muerte. This paper then digs deeper into the array of meanings interwoven into the fabrics of social life and spiritual stability of the living, in which the widespread embrace of material culture plays a dynamic role in the contemporary social rituals dedicated to the dead in the cemeteries of a megalopolis.” p.107
Reyes-Cortez, M. 2012: Material culture, magic and the Santa Muerte in the cemeteries of a megalopolis. Visible Religions, in Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol.13, No.1, (March, Routledge), pp. 107-131.
Jornada de Antropología – Representación visual del daño y del sufrimiento social
8 May 2014, Madrid
Departamento de Antropología Social y Cultural de la UNED, en la Escuela Pías
Recordando los Muertos en los cementerios de Álvaro Obregón, Ciudad de México.
En este artículo voy a considerar cómo la cultura material especialmente la fotografía, apoya la continuidad de las relaciones entre los vivos y los muertos. La investigación reveló cómo personas y actividades giraban en torno a los esfuerzos sostenidos por los dolientes, visitantes y trabajadores del cementerio para activamente mantener a los muertos como participantes en la vida de los vivos. En este artículo muestro cómo la cultura material puede proporcionar el vehículo a través del cual se pueden expresar las relaciones sociales con los muertos, y al mismo tiempo hablando con y expresar las características particulares de la persona muerta. Los mismos conjuntos de objetos y fotografías crean las condiciones para nuevas experiencias que están inevitablemente ligados al proceso de recordar a los muertos
Association of Social Anthropologist of the UK and Commonwealth
Anthropology and Enlightenment, 19-22 June, Edinburgh 2014
Reyes-Cortez on Portraits of Remembrance
Upstairs @ the RAI, Friday 31 October, 2014, 5pm