Tarek Elhaik’s first book—an ethnographic examination of multi-media artists, curators, and fellow anthropologists loosely centered around Mexico City—is a bold, highly theoretical… sophisticated book, steeped in an eclectic blend of cutting-edge anthropology, continental philosophy, and contemporary art theory.'

- Christopher Fraga, Somatosphere

For those tired of preachy and essentialist accounts of anthropologists and artists as handmaidens to other people's authentic, "bare" culture, Tarek Elhaik's book will be a shot in the arm. Elhaik agues that anthropology and art, by succumbing to the trope of radical alterity, have lost their speculative edge, while the international art market renders their sincere efforts irrelevant. His vivid and mordant analysis of the dramatic power dynamics of rivalry, complicity, contamination, and diagnosis among artists, curators, and anthropologists in Mexico will stimulate all who seek a bold new understanding of art-anthropology relations.

- Prof Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University,

This is a path-breaking book. Drawing on intensive and innovative participant-observation as well as a deep background in curatorial practice, Elhaik opens the way for a deterritorialization into new spaces and modes of thought and practice. As a result, the book takes the anthropological study of images beyond method into new sites of inquiry.'

- Prof Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley,