Surface and Depth in Sensory Ethnography: Casting Bodied Experience in an Arts-Based Interviewing Practice.

Arts-based research can provide pivotal avenues for researchers and participants to explore experiences that are difficult to put into words. Arts-based methods offer important opportunities for participants to develop reflexive understanding through material interaction with art and mark-making supplies. While sensorial and embodied experiences are entangled with arts-based methods, there is little methodological and theoretical work that puts arts-based research methods into conversation with sensory ethnography. This methods paper provides a detailed, critical reflection on the development and implementation of the sensorial arts-based exercise, Beneath the Surface, for research that examines solid-organ transplant recipients' embodied experiences through a crip/feminist/materialist framework. Adapted from art therapy practices, Beneath the Surface generated a novel context for the articulation of embodied experience, creating space for the expression of sensations and feelings that fall outside the dominant cultural narratives of transplant, such as the "gift of life" or a "second chance," that demand absolute gratitude. Beneath the Surface contributes to theoretical discussions surrounding embodiment, inscription, and interiority. The exercise also demands attention to ethical deliberations, highlighting the critical importance of developing trauma-informed research protocols and addressing the historically fraught relationship between critical disability studies and art therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]