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Rose Taylor

Rose Taylor

UCL Email: rose.taylor.14@ucl.ac.uk
Year of start: 2017
Supervisors: Professor Haidy Geismar, Dr Rafael Schacter
Subject: Social Anthropology
Fieldsite: Los Angeles

PhD Research

Contested Spaces: Negotiating Native American Artistic Identity in Los Angeles

My research focuses on contemporary Native American arts producers who use visual practices as a means of communicating their experiences as a Native person today and contributing to reclamation and re-indigenisation of their culture, imageries and spaces. Those who I work with engage in a wide range of visual mediums such as paintings, photography, installations, and performance. I aim to highlight Native perspectives on contemporary art, aesthetics and discourses of representation within the geographic framework of Los Angeles as a Native space and place. I consider how Native artists in this area negotiate notions of identity and artistic agency to reflect contemporary indigeneity in a sprawling and dynamic urban area. Simultaneously I explore the art world of Los Angeles in comparison to other geographic centres of Native art, as well as engaging in museum anthropology and museums as field sites.

Research interests

  • Visual culture
  • Native American art
  • Museum Anthropology
  • Anthropology of Art
  • Material culture
  • Intersection of Social and Environmental Anthropology
  • Political and diasporic identities
  • Urban ethnography
  • Ethnobotany
  • History of art

Presentations & Conferences

Conferences

  • 2019 - Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, SIMA Symposium: Weaving Relations - What Chumash Baskets in Museums Can Tell us About Identity and Status.
  • 2019 - Oxford University, Royal Anthropological Student Conference: Contested Spaces: Negotiating Native American Artistic Identity in Los Angeles.

Publications

  • 2019 - Exploding Objects: A Month at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Material World.

Education History

  • 2017 – Present: PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University College London (UCL).
  • 2014 – 2015: MSc Anthropology, University College London (UCL).
  • 2011 – 2014: BA (Hons) Anthropology with History of Art. Oxford Brookes University.