Para além das entrevistas logocêntricas: quando o etnógrafo reforça a sua caixa de ferramentas com arte, símbolos e artefactos

This article examines how art and creative strategies gained space during my ethnographic research on contemporary body suspensions in Europe. This made it possible to implement self-narratives, allowing interlocutors to express themselves beyond words. Art became a methodological adaptation to the topic, to the people I met, and to myself during the ethnographic research. To illustrate the methodological challenges faced during the study, this article aims to analyse questions such as: are words the best (main/only) way to investigate, understand, and convey the worldview experienced by interlocutors during fieldwork? And what happens when interlocutors have no words to express what they do? Should research be interrupted because of the study of experiences that are difficult to express through traditional forms of self-narration? In other words, should anthropologists transmit ethnographic descriptive constraints? Finally, how can art, or complementary investigative strategies, support an alternative communication process in ethnographic practice?