12/02/2025
The Choreography of Care
• • • •
Anthropologists from around the world are making their way back home from the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference, where this year’s meetings centered around Ghosts and hauntings.
The Afterwords: Rest & Rituals Worldwide, curated and guided by Amiyah King, is a rare immersive space that invites us to confront the realities of death. It is King’s deepest desire to normalize conversations around death-care by doing exactly that: putting the “afterwards” INTO words. From our legacy to the logistics, viewers learn that planning is a privilege and preparation begins with conversation.
Miss King conducted the exhibit from a position of lived experience. After navigating her father’s passing alone, she felt called to educate and support others professionally. I was honored to interview her and document her contribution. The reel accompanying this post captures what I believe to be the most poetic elements of curation—our hands. The choreography of care orchestrated by Amiyah was closure in motion and created intergenerational healing for a community that continues to be forgotten and erased.
That day, a brass band marched down Bourbon St. honoring victims from the Jan. 1st attack. The “dance for peace” juxtaposed to the quiet choreography of shrouding and the symbolic lowering of the body underscore a powerful truth illuminated by this year’s keynote speaker—in these troubled times our species needs more empathy, and contemporary anthropologists are leading the way.
Jason De León’s keynote address encapsulated ethnographic trends among scholars and students operating within a field undergoing major changes. Showcasing King’s exhibit as we reshape our roles and decolonize anthropology in the presence of digital platforms that are becoming increasingly integrated into the scholarly collective, not only can we track the transformation of our field in real time, we can disrupt the narratives dominating the places and spaces we occupy by curating new narratives. Not just in life and death historically, but personally as well.
