Artist Presentation 4: Ana Mendieta

"Imagen de Yagul"

"Silueta" Series

Ana Mendieta was exiled from Cuba as a teenager and thereby separated from her family. This dislocation caused her to be moved from orphanages to foster homes for years in Iowa. This dislocation from her roots caused a serious wound to her, creating a sense of isolation. Her work can be considered "violent, ritualistic, and ephemeral." Her art has been strongly influenced from a source within her that wants to be reunited with her Cuban past, but also wants to integrate her past with the American values she has been exposed to during her upbringing. Her sculptures have a very ephemeral nature to them. They possess the ability to mark the presence and absence of her body on the landscape. The purpose behind her work is very private and ritualistic, but at the same time the video documentations of her performances throw her work into the public sphere.

I was drawn to Mendieta's work because she used her body in order to express herself personally and socially. She challenged idealized traditions of the female body being passive. By establishing a dialogue between landscape and the female body, she was able to demonstrate how the latter is a source of life and sexuality. From 1973 to 1980 Mendieta created her "Silueta" series where she combined herself with natural materials. By working within the scale of her own small body she provided an alternative to the monumental view of male land and earthwork artists of the seventies, who even used bulldozers to create sculptures out of the earth. Even though her work seems to show a tendency toward feminism she was still aware of the fact that most feminists were white and of the middle class with little understanding of third world women. Therefore, Ana Mendieta's work did not fit neatly into any specific category of art taking place during her time.

Natural elements such as grass, mud, flowers, and trees captured Mendieta's attention, she was also drawn to another natural element: blood. The violent rape and murder of a fellow student on the campus of the University of Iowa in March, 1973 was a catalyst for some of her early performance pieces which used blood as a medium. Mendieta's performances were her "'reaction against the idea of violence against women.'" Mendieta described blood as "a very powerful magical thing." In "Body Tracks" her actions are hypnotic and her use of blood lends her the qualties of a shamanic priestess.