The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) recently awarded Zoe Eddy its inaugural Creative Anthropologies Prize for her installation "miskobagizi" (“a tree has red leaves”; an installation of absence and witness). Drawing on anthropological work with Indigenous communities, this urgent and powerful installation from Vermont, USA, uses red dresses to engage with the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S). The jury was particularly struck by the way the work captures absence as a political, visual, emotional, and ethical matter. Here, creative practice becomes an extension of anthropological method, enabling audiences to viscerally experience the absence of disappeared Indigenous women. Grounded in extensive fieldwork, the project brings an often-overlooked issue into focus and demonstrates the powerful potential of art and anthropology to make absence itself a form of visual, emotional, and ethical material.
