Dream Alliance: Art, Anthropology, and Consciousness
Phantasmata

Dream Alliance: Art, Anthropology and Consciousness is an interdisciplinary project that includes painting, collage, assemblage, sculpture, photography and performance. This exhibition brings together artists and anthropologists who investigate consciousness, particularly as an encounter with the unconscious or magic—that which is unknown—marking the limit of modern identity. The selected works create spaces for otherness as a collective experience (other than ruling class imaginaries), an experience that is both political and aesthetic, and thus envisioned here as a form of magic, which we define as the power to act. In this sense the dream alliance is an alliance across difference, based on a freedom of imagination and a politics of coexistence.

The exhibition, curated by Phantasmata (Melinda Kiefer Santiago & Christopher Santiago), stems from a special issue of Anthropology of Consciousness, a journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) that publishes research on a wide spectrum of topics all linked to the cross-cultural study of consciousness phenomena. The issue, edited by Melinda and Christopher, will be published in Fall 2023.

Curated by Melinda Kiefer Santiago and Christopher Santiago 

Participating Artists: Yasmeen Abdallah, Stephanie Beattie, Nurya Chana, Sally Beauty, Kerry Cox, Vanezza Cruz, Bethany Dinsick, Tenzin Doma Lama, Josh Dorman, Alexander Zev Gustafson, Molly Goehring, Spitz Handvisier, Megan Hyde, Melinda Kiefer Santiago, Ayanna Legros, Jason Lehmann, Amanda Lyn, Katie Minford, Daniel Onorato, Christopher Santiago, Sharon Servilio, Alyssa Smith-Lee