The art of ethnography: the aesthetics or ethics of participation?

When Hal Foster noted an ethnographic turn in the art world in the 1990s, he was eluding to broader 'impulses' that had haunted avant-garde movements throughout most of modernism, such as surrealism. However, the ethnographic turn did not just have an impact in the visual arts - areas such as cultural studies felt a shift from the textual towards the ethnographic. Two and half decades on, the pervasive nature of ethnography can be felt across the disciplines as ethnographic approaches evolve, migrate and transform, especially through the growing ubiquity of the digital. In this context, various entanglements need to be defined - especially the drawing upon ethnographic aesthetics and ethics in art practice. But is this ethnographic compulsion just a stylistic trend or does it speak of deeper concerns in the arts about engaging with social and cultural practices and reflexive participation? Drawing on case studies in contemporary art, this article focuses upon the haunting of the ethnographic turn in art through numerous guises from relational aesthetics onwards.