On the 25th Anniversary of Ana Mendieta’s death a comprehensive retrospective, Ana Mendieta: Documentation and Art Work, 1972-1985, was held at Galerie Lelong, Manhattan (WNYC Radio, 2011). The retrospective featured photography, drawings, sculpture and newly-restored films, some of which had never been seen before. The catalogue describes her as “an artist obsessed with the human body, its presence and its absence. Many of her images consist of her own silhouette imprinted on the earth or on structures. Others show her camouflaging her naked body into various natural environments.” (Galerie Lelong, 2010).
25
Surname Godwin______________________________________ First Name Joannie_____________________________________ Student ID 2010000697__________________________________ Name of Programme Bachelor of Applied Media Arts (Visual Media) Name of Paper BMA321 Research_____________________________ Facilitator Karl Hart___________________________________ Assignment No. 2___________________________________________ Unit Standard No. (If Applicable) ____________________________________________ Total No. of pages (including cover) 17__________________________________________ Submission Date 22/06/11____________________________________ Date received by facilitator____________________________________ 1 | 17
working for the counter revolutionaries (Roulet, 2004). The post revolution situation
deteriorated and two years later Mendieta was sent to the US on a Catholic sponsored
mission aimed at assisting Cuban youngsters to escape Communist indoctrination.
At thirteen Mendieta went from wealthy and socially advantaged to being the
underdog in Iowa, a rural, conservative, geographically isolated State in the USA.
Here she experienced the brutal realities of discrimination, rejection and abuse.
Furthermore, as she had no relatives in the USA, she was shunted between foster
homes and institutions, many of which also housed young people who were mentally
disturbed, emotionally unstable or had criminal tendencies. This unstable adolescence
left her with feelings of separation and abandonment (Viso 2004).
In this unsatisfactory, bordering dysfunctional, backdrop Mendieta was unable to
develop inter-family relational skills and as a result her ability for engagement was
underdeveloped (Viso 2004). Blocker (1999) emphasises Mendieta’s sense of
dislocation from her family and her land. Blocker further states that it was this very
sense of dislocation that formed the essence of Mendieta’s power as an artist (1999).
In 1966, Mendieta’s mother and little brother flew out to Iowa to live, as her father
was now imprisoned in Cuba (Viso, 2004). This reconnection with her mother (which
coincided with her years of self discovery studying for her Fine Arts degree at the
University of Iowa) started significant processes in Mendieta’s life.
Firstly she started to make the familial connections she had not been able to at the
appropriate time of her life. Secondly, with family support and resources, Mendieta
was introduced to the Cuban population in Miami. She started to reconnect with the
culture of her childhood and for the first time in fifteen years she began to feel that she
was not alone in a hostile culture (Blocker, 1999, Viso 2004).
In 1980 Mendieta made the first of many trips to Cuba both by herself and with other
prominent artists. She writes
“I was afraid before I went there, because I felt here I’ve been living my life with this
obsessive thing in my mind – what if I find out it has nothing to do with me? But the
minute I got there it was this whole thing of belonging again.”
(Mendieta in Roulet, 2004 p. 235)
Entering the Art World
5 | 1 7
Mendieta’s reconciliation with her mother and the Cuban community heralded an era
of self healing and restoration of identity which coincided with a ten year long
relationship with artist and professor, Hans Breder. As Mendieta began to perform her
identity she discovered the bond she had with the earth which guided her art work for
the rest of her life. Mendieta stated that she felt “overwhelmed by the feeling of
having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds
that unite me to the universe” (The African America Experience, 1999).
While this was happening in her emotional life, Mendieta was at University being
intellectually challenged Post-Minimalist performance, land art, body art, Installation
practice, video art, process and conceptual art which were busy questioning the
Modernist tradition of finding fixed meaning in works of art. Mendieta was plunged
into inquiries which involved the de-emphasis of product and the assumption of
transparency of meaning and presence. Rosenthal (2003) comments that as artists
confronted Modernism, the exalted status of galleries and dealerships became suspect.
The context of the works started to grow in importance, and relationship to Site was
explored in many ways. Temporariness, the provisional, diffusion, and de-centring
abounded. The focus was on the creative process necessary for making and being
(Honour and Fleming, 2005). In addition, de-centring demanded that the audience
became actively engaged in the viewing process in order to understand and appreciate
the works.
In these formative years Mendieta met many prominent artists through the University
and had participated in many works. She was introduced, through Willoughby Sharp
and Ted Victoria, visiting professors to the University, to kinetic, body and air art of
artists such as Vito Acconci, Chris Burden and Bruce Nauman (Roulet, 2004).
Mendieta was awarded her Masters of Fine Arts in mixed media in 1977 which was
influenced by Vito Acconci’s and Marcel Duchamp’s experimentation in gender
switching.
By this stage Mendieta had given up painting to concentrate on performance and she
began to merge her body with the land in a series of performances which she recorded
either photographically or on video. However, she did not claim to be part of the
Performance movement, although she acknowledges as influences artists such as
Nauman, Acconci, Oppenheim and the Viennese Actionists.
Her intention was to perform the boundary between herself and her audience, the
feminine and masculine, and the body and the spirit (Blocker, 1999) and to document
6 | 1 7
herself as she performed her overwhelming need “to ground herself in place, time and
history” (Viso , 2004, p. 56).
Burial Pyramid, Yagul, Mexico, 1974Super-8 colour, silent film transferred to DVD,running time: 3 minutes, 30 secondsEdition 5/6Alison Jacques Galleryhttp://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47/works/
Untitled 1977, Serie árbol de la vida (Tree of Life Series) Colour Photograph 131/4 x 20 inchesCollection of Raquel Mendieta Harrington. In Barreras del, Rio, P. and Perreault, J. (Curators) (1987)
Alma Silueta en Fuego (Silueta de Cenizas), 1975Super-8 colour, silent film transferred to DVDrunning time: 3 minutes, 30 secondsEdition 4/6Alison Jacques Galleryhttp://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47/works/
La Vivificación de la Carne (The Vivication of the Flesh) 1981 – 1982 Amategram Series Gouche and acrylic on amate (bark) paper 24 ¾ x 17 inches. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mrs. Fernand Leval and Robert Miller Gallery, Inc. Gift, 1983 (1983.502.1) in Barreras del, Rio, P. and Perreault, J. (Curators) (1987)
Untitled (Silueta Series), 1978Vintage colour photograph mounted on boardUnframed: 33.7 x 50.8 cms / 13 1/4 x 20 ins, Framed: 45.7 x 62 cms / 18 x 24 3/8 insAlison Jacques Galleryhttp://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47/works/
Ñáñigo Burial, 1976Forty-seven black ritual candles152.4 x 102.9 cms / 60 x 40 1/2 insAlison Jacques Galleryhttp://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47/works/
Untitled (Silueta Series), circa 1978Vintage colour photograph
Unframed: 20.3 x 25.4 cms / 8 x 10 ins, Framed: 32 x 38.7 cms / 12 5/8 x 15 1/4 insAlison Jacques Galleryhttp://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47/works/
on boardUnframed: 33.7 x 50.8 cms / 13 1/4 x 20 ins, Framed: 45.7 x 62 cms / 18 x 24 3/8 insAlison Jacques Galleryhttp://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47/works/
Photograph 9 ¼ x 7 ¼ inches Collection of Hans Breder Original Documentation 35 mm slide. In Viso, 2004)
The Influence of Feminism
Other powerful paradigm shifts were occurring while Mendieta was exploring the
freedom of post-modern practice. In 1975, the same year that Carolee Schneemann
performed Interior Scroll, Lucy Lippard, art historian and lecturer, visited University
of Iowa lecturing on womyn’s issues. The two womyn met and began a long
friendship. Mendieta developed close friendships with many other prominent
Feminist artists and was therefore very close to the Feminist movement. Blocker
reflects upon the interrelatedness of feminism and post-modernism commenting how
the challenges to modernism “meant aggressively to question sexism, to expose the
mechanisms of identity and difference, and to deconstruct representation. Indeed, the
efficacy of postmodernism is often said to be in its feminist conscience” (Blocker,
1999, p. 8).
In 1979 Judy Chicargo released Dinner Party celebrating many historic womyn
figures including references to the great goddess. Relationship was foremost in
feminist practice politically, artistically and socially. For example, Lippard included
Mendieta in several articles for publication, giving her national exposure which
proved advantageous to Mendieta’s career. Mendieta and Mary Beth Edelson hosted
dinner in honour of Louise Bourgeois where each artist was invited to dress as their
favourite artist. Mendieta dressed as Frida Kahlo. After the break up of her
relationship to Breder, she moved to New York to be near her feminist friends.
During this period she performed La Noche Yemayá where she is wrapped as a
mummy surrounded by glowing stars.
As Lucy Lippard wrote in 1980, “Feminism’s greatest contribution to the future of art
has probably been precisely its lack of contribution to modernism” (Blocker, 1999, p.
9) and relationship is diametrically opposed to the mechanical, technology driven,
modernist duality.
8 | 1 7
Mendieta’s consistent use of her body and its suggestion, as left by her silhouette,
introduced a feminist methodology into the earthworks of the time. Mendieta brought
the discussion back to the intimate space between man and spirit. She portrayed
herself as fusing with the landscape on many occasions and she criticised other earth
artists who brutalized Mother Earth with their monumental constructions. Her intent
was to illuminate humanity’s fragility compared to the power of nature. In this way
she was a precursor of the eco-feminist movement.
Relationship to Nature
Her first work considered to be an earth/body work was Untitled (Grass on Woman)
where she had other students glue freshly cut grass onto her naked back until she
appeared to fuse with the ground. Although it was not unusual at this time to use the
body in works of art, Mendieta differs from other artists in her genre (such as Bruce
Nauman) in that she photographed her own body. From this work she moved on to
produce what is now known as the Silueta series. In this series Mendieta integrates
her body into Nature in a variety of ways and then documents the process.
The Silueta series was possibly a way in which Mendieta attempted to incorporate her
shattered self into her native land thereby healing the rift in her identity that obsessed
her. As a consequence of her “profoundly sensuous relationship to nature and her
indelible marks on the earth,” (The African America Experience, 1999) Mendieta
believed that as an artist, she could not convey the layers of meaning she felt
compelled to, through performance. She came to believe that the environment of
performance was too limited and contrived. For this reason she began to perform
much of her work alone, in nature. She did not reveal the locations of her working
sites; instead she aimed to present the viewer with the metaphorical potential of the
site in terms of its origins and present existence. This reveals the identity crisis
prevalent in her work where she dealt with her own feelings of her origins and present
existence (Blocker, 1999).
Mendieta interacted with earth in many different ways to perform her identity and
most of the earthworks remain only in documented form. Butler (2003) points out that
each performance alters the identity of the performer. Interestingly, as Mendieta
performed she created works which were ephemeral and transient. Once she was
finished, the works vanished or disintegrated into nature.
9 | 1 7
Mendieta began to incorporate this newly discovered temporality into her identity as
she began to substitute an outline of her body to represent her presence in the
performance. By leaving traces of herself in the ground she was allowing Mother
Earth to act upon her, eroding or decaying therefore re-invested into the ‘continuity in
flux’ that is Life.
She saw her work as a dialogue between her body and the Earth, in a “symbiotic
relationship with the earth” (Viso, 2004, p. 56).
Blood and other Symbolism
Early on in her work, while she was still at University in fact, Mendieta started
investigating rape and domestic violence. In several of her works she featured images
of rape, of womyn tied up or of herself lying face down in a pool of blood and being
photographed. Throughout her life blood was an important signifier of ritual violence
and sacred force in her work.
Mendieta believed that blood was a powerful force with magical qualities. She saw an
authenticity and intuitive bonding to the spiritual in primitive cultures who believed in
magic. She endorsed the ideal that primitive cultures were holistic, held Nature as god
and aspired to Universal Truths. The sense of magic, knowledge and power expressed
in primitive art was a strong influence in her work (Viso, 2004).
In Untitled (Blood and Feathers) (1974) Mendieta combined the metaphors of blood
spilt in violence and blood as a powerful primitive force. Mendieta performed the
goddess in her ritualistic chicken killings of the 70s which coincided with the
resurgence of the goddess cult and the feminist theories that resurrected the goddess
10 | 1 7
Film still from Untitled (Blood Sign #1), 1974Super 8 colour, silent film retrieved from Galerie Lelong NY Webpage http://www.galerielelong.com/artists/
archetype. Mendieta included much matriarchal symbolism and used the mythical
imagery of the Tree of Life as inspiration for many of her first Silueta series.
Documentation
Documentation was a vital part of the process for Mendieta. She documented her
performances in photograph, film, and video, and this evidence is now the significant
body of her work. (The African American Experience, 1999). To obtain each
photograph of the ritualistic performance, Mendieta would shoot many preparatory
slides of a location to establish the point of view that she was after (Blocker, 1999).
Each image was vital to her message. She aimed to get a sense of longing into her
images as she strove to capture a moment of history and experience that was timeless
and universal (Viso 2004).
Subtly she shifted from using her body to perform, to documenting herself performing
a ritual. In this she was influenced by the idea that ritual traditions could invoke
powers, foster links between the living and the dead, and connect man to deity (Viso,
2004). Later she began to represent herself with a body shaped mound or outline on
11 | 1 7
Untitled ( Silueta Series0, Iowa), 1977 35 mm colour slide in Viso, 2004
the ground, and many of the ritual aspects of her work became more pronounced.
Themes
For her first Silueta Mendieta lay down in a tomb in Mexico, while Breder put white
flowers on her nude body and took photographs. She notes of this performance that
she feels as if she were covered in time and history (Roulet, 2004, p. 231). In between
this and her next work, Mendieta heard Vito Acconci at the University, after which
she continued to make earth-body works in archaeological zones. These early Siluetas
reference burial and archaeology. She inserted her naked body into nature as she
invoked her ancestral past by incorporating ritual, tradition, and the architecture of a
bygone civilization.
However these were not the only themes she dealt with. Her work was extremely
complex and deeply nuanced. In other Silueta works such as Untitled (Genesis Buried
in Mud) 1975, she inserted herself into the ground and then emerged as if from the
womb of Mother Earth (Roulet, 2004). In Alma Silueta en Fuego (Soul Silhouette on
Fire) she used a substitute for her body and burnt it. She also produced Siluetas in
snow and ice.
12 | 1 7
What set Mendieta apart from the male land artists of the time such as Smithson,
Heizer or Morris was her convincing feminine sensibility, which allowed her to
incorporate her strong sculptural responsiveness into her performative ritual (Viso
2004). In performing her Silueta pieces, Mendieta entered into a dialogue about
gender, culture, colour nation and ethnicity (Blocker 1999).
During one of these trips she created her Rupestrian Sculpture Series in which she
made earth sculptures in the limestone caves at the Escaleras de Jaruca. She dedicated
these carved and painted sculptures to the ancient earth goddesses, incorporating
Taíno Indian mythology and terminology. African American Express states that these
goddess figures “recalled the ancient Caribbean or pre-Columbian petroglyphs of
fertility deities” (African American Experience, 1999).
In one of the various Artist Statements of this time, she explains that she became
interested in primitive art and cultures during her childhood in Cuba.
“It seems as if these cultures are provided with an inner knowledge, closeness to
Untitled, (Fetish Series) 1977. Colour photograph, 20 x 13 ¼ inches Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta, in del Rio and Perreault, 1987),in Viso, 2004
natural sources. And it is this knowledge which gives reality to the images they have
created. This sense of magic, knowledge and power found in primitive art has
influenced my personal attitude toward art-making. For the past twelve years I have
been working out in nature, exploring the relationship between myself, the earth and
13 | 1 7
art. I have thrown myself into the very elements that produced me, using the earth as
my canvas and my soul as my tools.”
(Galerie Lelong, New York, quoted in The African American Experience, 1999)
From this stance Mendieta began to investigate Afro-Cuban culture, traditions and
iconography. Her interest led to the Fetish Series. African fetish figures are generally
wooden statuettes covered in protruding nails, alleged to summon spiritual
intervention.
Mendieta’s Fetish Series comprised mounds of earth in the shape of a body, impaled
with sticks in a circular pattern. Other figures were decorated with line drawings
resembling Afro-Cuban anaforuana signs or Haitian vѐvѐ ground painting. She
reflected on African and Afro-Cuban language and iconography throughout the rest of
her career to reveal her view of herself (Viso, 2004).
The end
By 1983 Mendieta is in a relationship with Carl Andre, and she and Andre collaborate
on a book of lithographs. They travel extensively throughout Europe, where Mendieta
produced Furrows, an undulating outdoor earthwork. Of this time she writes, “My
work is basically in the tradition of a Neolithic artist. It has very little to do with most
earth art. I’m not interested in the formal qualities of my materials, but their
emotional and sensual ones” (Mendieta in Roulet, 2004, p. 238).
Mendieta and Andre were married in 1985 and eight months later she fell to her death
in mysterious circumstances. Andre was acquitted of her murder. Two years after her
death the first Ana Mendieta retrospective was held.
Conclusion.
In this essay Mendieta’s life experiences have been discussed as a means to
understand the driving force behind her work. Many of her private beliefs have been
revealed and discussed in order to enter into the spirit of her work and to understand it.
It has been shown that Mendieta managed to modify and synthesize all the major
trends of the Post-Minimalist exploration. In her work one can discern an
amalgamation of many disciplines. Her work is not photography, nor land art, nor
14 | 1 7
body art. Blocker’s interpretation is that Mendieta’s work “stands at a complex
intersection between conceptual and earth art, post minimalism and feminism, and
critical theory and performance art of the times” (1999, p. 9).
At the Galerie Lelong, New York, Mendieta is listed as one of the “seminal artists of
our time” (Galerie Lelong, 2010).
John Perreault, writing in the exhibition catalogue of Mendieta’s first Retrospective, in
1987, declared that her artwork had made a “significant” contribution to art in the
twentieth century in that it was “expressive without being maudlin; it taps primitive
imagery and sources of energy without being exploitative” (Barreras del Rio &
Perreault, 1987, p. 13). In addition he observed
“When we have finished the task of sorting the art that emerged from seventies
pluralism – a task we are only now beginning – Mendieta’s art will be seen as far
more important than it is now possible to imagine. Her work foreshadows what can
only be called a turn to the spiritual” (Barreras del Rio & Perreault, 1987, p. 14).
Mendieta performed an understanding of the feminine that para-feminist theorists are
only now beginning to define (Jones, 2003). Her work features in many current
theorists’ works on para-feminist practice and we can see from this that she was ahead
of her times in being able to conceptualize the struggle that womyn and other
marginalized groups have, in 2011, for Identity.
15 | 1 7
Bibliography
Alison Jacques Gallery. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com
Barreras del Rio, P. & Perreault, J. (Curators). (1987). Ana Mendieta: a retrospective.
New York, N.Y.: The New Museum of Contemporary Art. 1987
Blocker, J. (1999). Where is Ana Mendieta? Durham and London, UK: Duke
University Press.
Butler, J. (2003). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in
Phenomenology and feminist theory. In A. Jones (Ed), The feminist and visual
culture reader. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge.
16 | 1 7
Galerie Lelong. (2010). Ana Mendieta: Documentation and Art Work, 1972-1985.
Retrieved from http://www.galerielelong.com
Honour, H., & Fleming, L. (2005). A world history of art. (7th ed.). London,
UK: Laurence King Publishing.
Jones, A. ( Ed). (2003). The feminism and visual culture reader. London, UK:
Routledge
Rosenthal, M. (2003). Understanding installation art: from Duchamp to
Holzer. Munich, Germany and New York: Prestel.
Roulet, L. (2004). Ana Mendieta: A life in conflict. In O. M. Viso, Mendieta:earth
