Jessica Lynne Petty 1 Interpreting the Art of Ana Mendieta through a Heideggerian Framework: Dasein, Death and Equipment “That kind of Being towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and always does comport itself somehow, we call ‘existence’ [Existenz]. . .Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence-in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself.” 1 From her earliest days at the University of Iowa to the time of her death in 1985, Ana Mendieta adapted and synthesized the artistic influences of the seventies – conceptualism, body art, performance, installations and earth art – to animate the territorial boundaries between artist and audience, male and female, body and spirit. 2 Mendieta’s work employs various material objects, the physical body, natural elements and ritual symbolism to explore what it means to be. Her Dasein and her awareness of it come across in the pieces. Mendieta’s personal experience becomes translated and integrated into these physical manifestations relating to life and the world outside of the self. Thus, the seemingly personal and autobiographical forms and substances within her sculptures can be universalized as human. Her art can be interpreted more usefully as an inquiry or seeking into Being rather than solely as an individual expression of cultural Otherness or as mere creative acts. In Mendieta’s own words, “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy, which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to specter, from specter to plant, from plant to galaxy.” 3 Her artistic exploration of this universal, primordial energy becomes a meaningful point of departure for a reconsideration of her work. 1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1962): 32-33. 2 Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta?, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999): 10. 3 Guy Brett, “One Energy,” in Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985, 181- 203 (Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Museum, 2004):199.
Transcript
Jessica Lynne Petty 1
Interpreting the Art of Ana Mendieta through a Heideggerian Framework:
Dasein, Death and Equipment
“That kind of Being towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and always
does comport itself somehow, we call ‘existence’ [Existenz]. . .Dasein always understands itself in
terms of its existence-in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself.”1
From her earliest days at the University of Iowa to the time of her death in 1985,
Ana Mendieta adapted and synthesized the artistic influences of the seventies –
conceptualism, body art, performance, installations and earth art – to animate the
territorial boundaries between artist and audience, male and female, body and spirit.2
Mendieta’s work employs various material objects, the physical body, natural elements
and ritual symbolism to explore what it means to be. Her Dasein and her awareness of
it come across in the pieces. Mendieta’s personal experience becomes translated and
integrated into these physical manifestations relating to life and the world outside of the
self. Thus, the seemingly personal and autobiographical forms and substances within
her sculptures can be universalized as human. Her art can be interpreted more usefully
as an inquiry or seeking into Being rather than solely as an individual expression of
cultural Otherness or as mere creative acts. In Mendieta’s own words, “My art is
grounded in the belief of one universal energy, which runs through everything: from
insect to man, from man to specter, from specter to plant, from plant to galaxy.”3 Her
artistic exploration of this universal, primordial energy becomes a meaningful point of
departure for a reconsideration of her work.
1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1962): 32-33. 2 Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta?, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999): 10. 3 Guy Brett, “One Energy,” in Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985, 181-203 (Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Museum, 2004):199.
Jessica Lynne Petty 2
Nearly twenty years after Mendieta’s death, the art historical discourse continues
to analyze and interpret her life’s work in an ongoing effort to determine its significance,
influence, and impact. Mendieta’s art work has been read from several perspectives
including feminist and ethnic Otherness as well as the art movement conceptualism.
However, none of these readings seems to capture the complexity and richness of her
art because each approach fails to consider the depth of the human experience her art
engenders. True, Mendieta was each of these things- woman, artist, Cuban-American
exile, perhaps even a victim - but none of these definitions in isolation seems adequate.
Her art pleads with the viewer to perceive differently, to uncover something universal
outside of the self. Her search for both identity and connection parallels her search for
meaning.4 As Mendieta sought to locate herself within her new environment of the
United States, she simultaneously attempted to discover a deeper fundamental truth
regarding the human experience. By perceiving differently, that is by looking at Ana
Mendieta without pigeonholing her work into a single agenda, a more authentic and
universal understanding of the individual and her art can be uncovered. This analysis
does not intend to discount earlier studies of Mendieta but rather seeks to open a new
intellectual space between discourses where her identity and work can be discussed
less restrictively.
Artist Ana Mendieta and philosopher Martin Heidegger do not share many
superficial similarities. They were not of the same ethnic background, did not speak the
same language nor share political ties. However, they are both modernists working
within in totalitarian contexts and their individual quests for some universal truth parallel
4 Kaira M.Cabanas, “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, Body I am,’” Women’s Art Journal v20 n1 (Spring/Summer 1999): 16.
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one another. The performances, Siluetas, and sculptures of Ana Mendieta embody the
themes of existence, materiality, time and death – some of the key concepts in
Heidegger’s work. This paper will explore Mendieta’s art work through a framework of
the key concepts presented in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and his essay “The
Origin of the Work of Art.” This will be accomplished through thematic analysis of
Mendieta’s performances and sculptures incorporating Heideggerian concepts of
Dasein, being-towards-death, anxiety, equipment and temporality.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) transformed the approach to
phenomenology and philosophy in general with his most famous work, Being and Time.
The question posed in this seminal work is not whether something does exist or how to
characterize the existence of particular types of things, for example, material or mental,
but simply to ask about the very meaning of being.5 Dismissing the Cartesian
conception of the subject as a transcendental ego and seeking to return to the
beginning of philosophy to recover a clearer, richer understanding of what human
beings are all about, Heidegger disposed of the assumption that reality must be thought
of in terms of the idea of substance at all. Heidegger worked with a hermeneutical,
interpretive approach which sought to focus on everyday, prereflective activities and the
way we actually experience them. In Being and Time, Heidegger asked the essential
philosophical and human question phenomenologically: What is it, to be? He then used
this approach concerning the meaning of being as the foundation for all of philosophy in
an attempt to reorient Western philosophy toward ontological rather than metaphysical
5 Michael Gelven, A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time Rev. Ed., (Dekalb, IL: Northern University Press, 1989): 7.
Jessica Lynne Petty 4
and epistemological questions.6 It is because of this contribution of an ontological
approach evolving from his phenomenological background that Heidegger is a major
influence on existentialism, deconstruction, and postmodernism.
For Heidegger, our being is defined by the fact that we are beings-in-a-world.
Therefore, it stands a priori, or as a given, that we are here, living in the world, exploring
(to differing degrees) what it means for us to be in a world. Heidegger attempts a
systematic investigation of human being (Dasein) in order to establish the meaning of
being in general. His development of the concept of Dasein holds significance as a way
of exploring the dual nature of being as both primal (ontological) and authentic (ontic).
Dasein is our awareness of being or human consciousness of our selves as beings. It
centers upon our recognition of existing within the world. For Heidegger, the body holds
importance as the house for Dasein, or the physical location of the potential for being.
Likewise, his concept of the world becomes understood through what it means for a
human being to be in it, experiencing life, rather than as an abstract cosmic entity.
Heidegger explores the type of “being” humans have. Humans are thrown into a
world they have not made that consists of potentially useful things, including cultural as
well as natural objects. The objects and artifacts encountered come from the past and
are used in the present to achieve future goals. Heidegger sets up the fundamental
relationship between the mode of being of objects, the mode of being of humanity and
the structure of time. The individual is, however, always in danger of being submerged
in the world of objects, everyday routine, and the conventional, shallow behavior of the
crowd. Heidegger calls this risk of getting caught up in the average everydayness
6 Heidegger’s approach differed from Husserl’s in that he began with the recognition that we are in the world rather than viewing that concept as an abstract.
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“falling”. “This leveling off of Dasein's possibilities to what is proximally at its everyday
disposal also results in a dimming down of the possible as such.”7 In dimming down,
the potential of becoming caught up in this “everyday-ness” leads to the fundamental
phenomenon of anxiety (Angst). The experience of anxiety brings the individual to a
confrontation with death and the ultimate meaninglessness of life, but it is only through
this confrontation that an authentic sense of Being (unconcealedness) and of freedom
can be attained.
Humans have a genuine goal to the extent that they abandon their quest for self-
aggrandizement and instead realize their function by doing what they are called on to do
by the destining (Geschick) of being.8 Authentic experience can only be achieved when
individuals come to realization of who they are and grasp the fact that each person is a
distinctive entity with a destiny to fulfill. Concern results from the human awareness of
one’s possibility in life and provides choices which are made in a world of other human
beings. Genuine care (Sorge) is needed in order to be simply for the sake of being –
not for the sake of man but for the sake of the being of entities in totality. In order to be
authentic, Dasein must have care and concern for other beings and the world along with
an awareness of and resolution towards death. “The more authentically Dasein
resolves-and this means that in anticipating death it understands itself unambiguously in
terms of its ownmost distinctive possibility – the more unequivocally does it choose and
find the possibility of its existence, and the less does it so by accident.”9 Thus, Dasein
also serves as a way to get at an ontological understanding of time. Heidegger
7 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1962): 195. 8 The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 35.
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discusses the horizon of time not in literal, fixed points, but as a changing end goal of
death. For Dasein, death is a possibility that is both inherited and inevitably chosen
which is always present.
Ana Mendieta’s oeuvre aptly illustrates the duality of the inherent anxiety and
possibility of the human experience. Its material content, physical form and active
creation embody many of Heidegger’s fundamental concepts. Before her death and
especially after, Mendieta became a commodity to be used by the art world discourse
both symbolically and literally. That is, she has been appropriated by the discourse to
support various agenda and theories. Ana Mendieta’s identity serves as a footnote in
the history of feminism, a metaphor for the colonization of Cuba, an example of the
victimization of women within the art world, and a symbol of the ambiguous identity of
racial difference. The strange circumstances of her 1985 death, after a fall from the
windows of her New York apartment where she lived with her husband, the sculptor
Carl André, and the subsequent legal proceedings, in which the latter was first accused
then acquitted without the causes of the accident ever being fully clarified, have
contributed to the many readings which reached the conclusion that Ana Mendieta was
the victim of social oppression and a rebellious symbol of uprootedness.10 Even though
these interpretations have a factual basis, they limit her significance with labels and
superficialities.
Born into an aristocratic Cuban family in 1948, Ana Mendieta and her sister
arrived unescorted at the Miami International Airport on September 11, 1961 through
9 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1962): 384. 10 Santiago B. Olmo, “Ana Mendieta,” Art Nexus no23 (Jan./Mar. 1997): 136.
Jessica Lynne Petty 7
Patria Protesta11 and were sent to Camp Kendal, a refugee processing camp. Three
weeks later, the sisters were relocated to a residential facility in Dubuque, Iowa because
they had no family in the United States. For the next five years, they moved from
orphanage to foster home to boarding school, often facing discrimination for their Latin
heritage. Exiled from her homeland at the formative age of twelve, the traumatic
experience of being sent away from her parents during the Cuban Revolution shaped
Mendieta’s self-perception and way of looking at the world. As she later described, “It’s
then that I realized that I lived in a little world inside my head. It wasn’t that being
different was bad, it’s just that I had never realized that people were different. So trying
to find a place in the earth and trying to define myself came from that experience of
discovering differences.”12 This was the situation in which Mendieta was “thrown” into
as a being-in-the-world. She arrived in the United States without prior knowledge of her
situation or personal choice. Already feeling displaced and isolated as a young teen in
a foreign country, she soon found in art a way to express her sense of dislocation,
anger and search for identity.
Beginning in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Mendieta started to channel her
energy into the arts and received a BA in art, an MA in painting and MFA in multimedia
arts from the University of Iowa. As painting proved too restrictive, Mendieta turned to
new materials and mediums and took her first class in the new Intermedia Program.
This new innovative and progressive art program featured some exceptional instructors
including Hans Breder, Robert Wilson and art critic-in-residence Willoughby Sharp.
11 During the Cuban revolution, Patria Protesta (Operation Pedro Pan) was a Catholic archdiocese program to relocate the children of upper-class Cuban families to the United States for safety reasons. 12 Interview with Linda M. Montano. First published in Sulfur, 65-69; reprinted in Linda M. Montano, Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 394-99.
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Through them, Mendieta was exposed to recent body and conceptual work by Vito
Acconci and Bruce Nauman as well as other young artists who explored their own
bodies as sculptural materials.
Her first trip to Mexico in 1971 for an anthropology field course proved to be a
formative and influential experience, providing Mendieta with a much needed surrogate
homeland. During this voyage, she became immersed in pre-Columbian art and early
colonial artifacts, both of which would greatly impact her work. While there, she studied
Aztec deities, cataloging them for a professor’s archives. For Mendieta, primitive
cultures possessed “an inner knowledge, a closeness with natural resources” that
endowed them with a certain “authenticity.”13 Thus, in the creative, avant-garde climate
of the 1970’s, performance, feminism, earthworks, ancient culture and video all became
components in Mendieta’s work.
In truth, it is impossible to frame Mendieta’s work completely entirely outside of
afore mentioned arguably narrow scope of feminist perspective and historical
influences. Seminal works of the first generation feminist movement helped frame the
essential terms and create the climate from which Mendieta cultivated her own method
of achieving authenticity. It is hard to imagine that pieces like Carolee Schneeman’s Eye
Body (1963) [Figure 1] were totally out of mind as Mendieta came up with her own
ancient archetype of a form that at first was decidedly female. Furthermore,
Schneeman’s exploration of the Great Goddess provided Mendieta with an elementary
vocabulary to begin using her own body as a form of self expression, an essential
element to the earlier phases of her career.
13 Olga M. Viso, “The Memory of History,” in Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985, 35-135 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Museum, 2004): 45.
Jessica Lynne Petty 9
In a more object-based rather than performative manner, Judy Chicago’s feminist
installation, The Dinner Party, (1973-1979) [Figure 2] sought to visually reference the
importance of historically significant women and celebrate the Great Goddess. While
Chicago, using stylized and symbolic table décor, intended to invoke specific memories,
or stereotypes about those figures, Mendieta’s work aspires to invoke a more primitive
and fundamental concept of womanhood. Cindy Sherman’s famously celebrated
photographs of herself in the Untitled (Film Still) works (1977-80) [Figure 3] illustrated
the concept of self as something culturally constructed and malleable. However, her
photographs were rooted in a conscious understanding of cultures that surround us
along with the need to appropriate context from things that were decidedly modern.
Mendieta’s work too is inherently about change and transformation. But instead of
contextualizing it in the present, she reaches back to an ancient, primordial time.
Sherman’s props function intentionally as interchangeable disguises whereas Ana
Mendieta’s formal decisions develop from the meanings behind and within the work.
For Mendieta, the desired aesthetic effect evolves directly out of the essential materials.
The recurrent theme of violence in Mendieta’s early work stems from and
connects to important feminist work taking shape at that time. Mendieta’s Untitled (Rape
Scene) 1973 attests to the fact that she was subject to the same emotions and
reactions to violence as her contemporaries. But where works like In Mourning and
Rage (1977) by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz [Figure 4] along with Torture of
Women (1976) [Figure 5] by Nancy Spero focus the references intellectually inward
towards specific events and victims, Mendieta’s anonymous depictions of violent
aftermath are far more graphic, overt, and emotionally engaging. She uses her body as
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a surrogate for all women in some cases, forcing the viewer to become part of the
actual act rather than experiencing a reactionary statement from a removed vantage
point.
Issues of femininity, divinity and violence were not the only seminal influences as
Mendieta was discovering her artistic self. Art as performance or more universally as
non-commodity based was already well established and integrated into the program at
the University of Iowa. However, it was still the norm to experience performance and
body art within a venue that was easily accessible. Mendieta’s earth-body sculptures
differ in that they predominately took place on remote, secluded beaches and
riverbanks with her as the primary witness at the time of their creation.14
Due to her use of natural elements and the exterior settings, Mendieta has also
been compared to other artists working with the earth as a medium but the comparison
here is merely technical and material. Whereas Robert Smithson employed the use of
machine and bulldozers to move the ground for his large-scale earthworks, Mendieta
used her own hands to gather and form the landscape. Smithson’s work was more
concerned with the effectual relationship between his land installations and the
environments they were created in than with a universalizing force. Likewise, the large
geometric steel grids of Walter DeMaria’s Lightning Field (1977) [Figure 6] lack the
emotional spiritual aspect and organic quality present in the Siluetas. They utilize
similar environments to stage their work but the lasting impressions are entirely different
14 Viewers of Mendieta’s work today see only the reproduced documented portions of the actions that remain in the form of 35mm color slides and Super-8 video. Thus, the complete engagement of the audience becomes limited by the restricted viewing experience after the action has taken place. Despite the mediated nature of experience through documentation, it remains clear that the scenarios and sculptures created by Mendieta intentionally provoke feelings of introspection and thoughts about mortality.
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from one another. In these ways, Mendieta’s work diverges from and surpasses that of
her contemporaries. It successfully and movingly brings together aspects of feminism,
earthworks, conceptualism and performance to form a uniquely layered and innovative
art form.
As an oeuvre, Mendieta’s work evolves significantly over her thirteen year career
in content, form and intent. Beginning in 1973 and continuing through 1980 in various
incarnations, the earth and body works took place directly in the landscape. By 1981,
she transitioned into the radically different format of freestanding sculpture and
drawings which she focused on until her death in 1985. Her trademark earth-body
sculptures, known as the Silueta series, started to take shape in the early seventies with
a tangible exploration of the materiality of the body. Early pieces such as Glass on
Body (1972) [Figure 7], Untitled (Rape Scene, 1973) and Body Tracks (1974)
incorporate the artist’s physical self and draw attention to her body as the vehicle for
cultural experience. This signals an early awareness of both her bodily self and her
personal history as a being experiencing the world.
In context with the larger body of work, Glass on Body, much like
Untitled (Cosmetic Facial Variations, 1972), functions as a very literal example of self
depiction. Her form appears here as overtly as any self portrait. Although her facial
features become heavily distorted as a result of the mechanical manipulation taking
place, Mendieta remains recognizable. But despite the literality of her appearance, there
is evidence of self-exploration and being. Aware of her existence in the world, she
presses her body against the glass to explore the materiality of her own flesh. The
Plexiglas serves as an elementary device to alter ideas about recognition and the
Jessica Lynne Petty 12
viewer’s perception of Mendieta as a person. Later works result in Mendieta removing
the literal self entirely, but here she leaves her individual persona in the work rather than
a substitute universal female form. The thick transparent plastic simultaneously garners
attention for its constructed-ness. Manmade, not found in nature, the material would
quickly be dismissed by the artist in favor of more organic, malleable mediums. In
Glass on Body, Mendieta works as conscious producer, intentionally manipulating and
distorting her body against the glass as it receives her imprint. She evocatively begins
to explore her potential for authenticity through art.
With Untitled (Rape Scene) 1973, an outraged performative response to
violence against women, the idea of using her body as a representational device begins
to form. For this work, Mendieta invited her unsuspecting peers to her apartment to see
a recreated crime scene. When they arrived, they found the door ajar with Mendieta
tied to a table, motionless and stripped from the waist down, covered with blood.
Significantly, she mimics the state of being of humans as thrown into a world with other
humans by situating herself as an object in the world of her apartment. The action
holds historical importance for addressing a contemporary issue but also because
Mendieta uses her body as a symbol rather than as her literal self for the first time. She
simultaneously becomes both subject and object. Significantly, for Heidegger, the
subject and object belong together in the single entity of Dasein within the world and
cannot be separated. Although not yet developed here, Mendieta’s early work
undoubtedly sets the course for her fundamental fascination with and exploration of a
universal bodily form. As she begins to explore the fundamentals of artistic physicality,
typical conceptions of self depiction are slowly stripped away. This change in
Jessica Lynne Petty 13
conception eventually leads her work to become more symbolic than documentary in
form. By 1974, Mendieta’s work evolved away from the manipulated inclusion of her
actual physical body and turned to sculptural, abstracted invocations. Influenced by a
rich combination of her own personal experience, Catholic upbringing, knowledge of
deities, Neolithic culture, Pre-Columbian art, and Santeria, the Siluetas incorporate the
past with the present, opening up a world that did not exist before their creation.
In the “The Origin of a Work of Art”, Heidegger’s first serious philosophical inquiry
into art, he addresses history and origin as the source of nature. Although his
discussion of the Greek temple and Van Gogh’s shoes ultimately lead him to conclude
that art in modernity is dead because all great art is a thing of the past, he sets up an
intellectually compelling circular argument. For Heidegger, a great work of art must
have world-historical significance, meaning that a culture as a whole must perceive its
greatness in order for it to be so. In addition, it follows that art is the origin of both the
artist and the work. The artist and the work art are inextricably linked together and
interdependent. Though much of this essay refers to poetry as the preeminent art form,
the ideas relate to all of art in the relationship between history and truth. According to
Heidegger, “Art, founding preserving, is the spring that leaps to the truth of what is, in
the work.”15 So, he sets forth that art has the potential for both truth and beauty when
being sets itself to work. However, he asserts that the potential truth in art often goes
unrealized due to denial, concealedness and that which is the ordinary.
Within this essay, the essential link between Mendieta’s work and Heideggerian
theory becomes fleshed out through a discussion of Van Gogh’s painting of peasant
15 Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. Clive Cazeaux, 80-101 (New York: Routledge, 2000):100-101.
Jessica Lynne Petty 14
shoes in terms of their “thingly character” and usefulness as equipment. Here, he
positions the shoes as “equipment” used in both daily life and as artistic material “work”
within the confines of the painting. Through the work of art, the shoes transcend their
average everydayness and thus they become illuminated as truth. According to
Heidegger, “The work makes public something other than itself; it manifests something
other; it is allegory.”16 Van Gogh’s representation of the peasant’s shoes enables the
viewer to see the true nature of the shoes17 and through this revealing, the shoes
become something beyond their usefulness – they are more than just a single piece of
equipment that will wear away and fall into disuse. In exceeding the limits of their
equipmental nature, the shoes become work and truth happens.
Similarly, Mendieta defined the role of the artist “as not a gift but a commitment,”
stating that there was “nothing as beautiful and humanizing in a work than that which
sharpens sensibilities and opens new worlds to man.”18 In “The Origin of the Work of
Art”, Van Gogh’s shoes represent truth, and thereby beauty in the revelation of their
equipmental nature and unconcealedness. This links to Mendieta’s work in the way she
employs organic substances to mimic and represent humanity, endowing them with
meaning outside of their inherent materiality. In her art, mere things (soil, wood, stones)
become equipment, enabling us to “be somewhere else than we usually tend to be.”19
Earth-body works such as Anima from the Firework Silhouette Series (1976),
Untitled from the Fetish series (1977) and the gunpowder silhouette from the Silueta
16 Ibid, 81. 17 It is not the material form of the shoes that is significant but the unconscious way in which they are used by the peasant woman as she works in the field. The shoes belong to the earth and are protected in the world of the peasant woman. 18 Excerpt from Mendieta’s personal writings. Reprinted in Gloria Moure, ed, Ex. cat. Ana Mendieta (Santiago de Compostela: Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea,1996), 176. 19 Ibid, 88.
Jessica Lynne Petty 15
series (1979) recall the physical form while also indicating an absent presence. Each
Silueta contains elements of transformation – fire, running water in the form of rivers,
ice, gunpowder, and various natural sources of energy for highlighting the forces of
creation and destruction in the world. The Siluetas are a visual reminder of the brevity
of life and the inevitable possibility of death as they burn, melt, float away, explode and
change with the environment. Symbolically representing anxiety and the human
condition, the earthy elements of these pieces collide and dissolve, causing momentary
interruptions as they blend slowly back into the earth. By juxtaposing opposing natural
forces such as water and earth and fire and air, Mendieta elucidates the union and
tension between the world and earth. With the Siluetas, Mendieta delves further into
the realm of materiality initiated by Glass on Body.
In Gunpowder Silueta (1979) [Figure 8], a total of abstraction of self takes place
in stages. A bodily framework, significantly reduced to a zigzag pattern of gunpowder,
represents the human form. A series of 35mm slides, taken by the artist, document the
action in multiple frames. As much as the representation of a physical form is central to
the work, there is movement towards the recognition of other forces on one’s existence.
Each state of the work: preparation, destruction and the aftermath, represents a unique
state of being and thus as a whole, a statement on transition. In this particular work, the
catalyst for change is violent – fire, a centrally important element in Mendieta’s work and
a symbol of raw, elemental energy. The intentional use of gunpowder as a medium
further implies violence and the intent to cause change. This particular piece, along
with all of her works involving gunpowder and fireworks, highlights the intensely
physical, active and empowered nature of Mendieta’s artistic process. Compared with
Jessica Lynne Petty 16
the less intrusive emotion of her land-based sculptures, these installations had an
immediate catalyst which Mendieta set in motion. By kneeling down in the dirt to light
the wick, she, rather than an external force, initiated the transformation.
With the Siluetas, Ana Mendieta’s self exploration moves outside of the individual
context. The ideas of being in the world are expressed by a universal bodily form with
more primitive essentialist origins. Strong associations about death, life and ritualism
are called into play. Essentialism, absence, and universality are all fundamental
components within Mendieta’s work. Since primacy and authenticity are such central
ideas to Heidegger’s understanding of being, it is easy to make the connection to works
that invoke such strong feelings of primitivism such as Earthbody Work (1976).
Earthbody Work [Figure 9] draws attention to the strenuous physical efforts
required in the creation of Mendieta’s work. Mendieta, a five foot tall, petite woman
manually working alone in nature with rocks, moved the soil itself in an attempt to
reshape it and endow it with significance outside of its equipmental nature. The
importance of Mendieta’s own hands and physical effort is as essential to the creation to
of the Siluetas as their materials. She used her body as a tool, manipulating natural
substances, be it soil, sand, grass or rocks, and gave them new form and meaning. In
this act, objects move beyond their “thingly” character - stones surpass their stoniness
to become a work which opens up a “world”. Paralleling the manner in which the
peasant shoes reveal truth, the rocky terrain of an animal’s dwelling has been altered to
convey something more meaningful. The physical form is only alluded to in the carved
out geology, reinforcing basic conceptions of primitive and ancient rituals. This
abstracted inclusion of the human form elevates the importance of using soil and the
Jessica Lynne Petty 17
natural environment as medium. In contrast with other Siluetas where natural elements
are sculpted to mimic the human form, a shift occurs here resulting in a fundamental
reliance on the power of negative space. The ground has been displaced, moved away
rather than built up, creating a sculptural void in the form of a body. Placing such
importance on the concept of absence suggests that being has much more to do with
experience, actions and motivations than an actual physical form. This primacy of one’s
conscious experience of self as a being-in- the- world forms the entire premise of Being
and Time.
In Alma Silueta en Fuego (1975) [Figure 10], the use of fire results in a dramatic
combustion, with symbolic elements of Catholicism. “The artist’s use of fire in tandem
with the uplifted arms motif was intended to suggest the well-known subject of the soul
burning in purgatory of Catholic tradition, seen in many examples including those
familiar to Mendieta such as Mexican folk art and popular religious imagery.”20 The
materials used likewise invoke not a slow, natural disintegration but rather the process
of immolation reducing the figure to ashes. Wrapping a cardboard “soul” form with
fabric soaked in combustible liquid, Mendieta “sacrifices” the Silueta form. The
reference to death and subsequent transformation through it is apparent.
Another symbolically important work, Untitled, Mexico (1976) [Figure 11], created
along the beachfront in Mexico, features a sunken relief female figure carved into the
sand and partially filled with red pigment. As the tide came in, Mendieta filmed the
dissolution and erasure of her sculptural efforts. Symbolically, it demonstrates a death
– the washing away of the traces made by the artist’s hand. It also mimics the passage
of time and the forgetfulness of our everyday understanding by visually addressing the
Jessica Lynne Petty 18
issues of mortality that cause anxiety. Fierce in concept but fragile in form, her site-
specific sculptures, installations, and performances appropriately mingle timeliness with
timelessness, underscoring the tensions of hope and despair in the human experience
that make Mendieta’s art alluring and haunting.21 She uses seemingly organic
materials, such as the red pigment symbolizing blood, making them become equipment
and seeking to create a work that sets up a world and sets forth the earth. Untitled,
Mexico aptly conveys the susceptibility of humans to elements outside of their control.
As the tide washes in to release the pigment and simultaneously destroy the work there
is a feeling of overwhelming forces at work. In this case, however, destruction is not
unwelcome as it provides release for whatever lies within. This type of “death” is not an
ominous or traumatic occurrence, simply a method of transformation and one more
event in the path of self-realization.
Many death rituals within the Western world and beyond involve the elements of
earth and fire. Aside from Heidegger’s assertion that death is an inevitable, many
cultures view death as a method of transformation, a way of moving from one mode of
being to the next. In the aftermath of Silueta en Fuego the effigy could be regarded not
as destroyed, but more accurately to have moved on to another stage of existence.
It has been suggested by scholars that Mendieta’s Siluetas demonstrate a symbolic
form of death and rebirth. “Mendieta explained about the importance of nature
reabsorbing her art: ‘it is a whole process of intimate life-death-birth’.”22 This cycle
20 Julia P. Herzberg, “Ana Mendieta’s Iowa Years: 1970-1980,” in Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, 169. 21 Colette Chattopadhyay, “Ana Mendieta’s Sphere of Influence,” Sculpture, Washington, D.C. v18 no5 (June 1999): 41. 22 Julia P. Herzberg, “ Ana Mendieta’s Iowa Years 1970-1980,” in Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985, 137-179 (Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Museum, 2004):178.
Jessica Lynne Petty 19
recalls Heidegger’s notion of the temporality of our existence though he does not
concern himself with life after death or rebirth. His scope surpasses the biological,
psychological and theological aspects of death in order to demonstrate how the
certainty of death affects human existence. For Heidegger, death holds tremendous
significance because in only in death can the totality of human experience be grasped.
Dasein’s awareness of impending death impacts the fullness of one’s life. Through this
knowledge, what it means to be is influenced by the awareness of what it means not to
be. Visually, Mendieta’s pieces, through their empty manifestations rich with complex
meanings and ephemeral material echo Heidegger’s concepts of anxiety towards death
and the knowledge of our own eventual demise.
By the 1980’s, work done in Mendieta’s homeland of Cuba moved even further
away from her own body and included the use of native natural materials – cave walls.
She traced symbols onto the earth and carved into it, bridging the past and present in
attempt to link with her history and located herself within it. This segment of creative
production served as a crucial part of Mendieta’s search for personal and cultural
identity. The Heideggerian notion of history places Dasein at the core of the impetus for
care. In her search for identity, Mendieta explores her links to the historicity of the past
through symbolically charged materials within the landscape.
In the last phase of Mendieta’s work: Mud Figure (Earth and Binder on Wood,
1983-84) [Figure 12] and Nile Born (Sand and Wood, 1984) Untitled (Wood Carved and
Burned w/ Gunpowder, 1985), the art becomes inanimate - object-based rather than
performative, distinctly removed from the emotion of her earlier work. Previously, her
art had a sense of impermanence both in form and in creation –much of it washed
Jessica Lynne Petty 20
away, melted or dispersed by the elements within nature and photography had formerly
been the only way to capture it. The later works, created for indoor spaces and greater
marketability continue her commitment to nature and prehistory with an inherent sense
of permanency. However, these sculptures still maintain a degree of organic transition
as they crack, crumble and age naturally. Even in its most mature form, her work
remains somewhat transitory and unfixed- susceptible to the passage of time and
exposure to the elements. Significantly, soil, the most common element in the earth-
body works, remains an essential component. For the indoor sculptures, Mendieta
collected bags of soil from different places such as the Nile, Red Sea, Pompeii and
Malta.23 Nile Born incorporates soil brought back by a friend from Egypt, demonstrating
her commitment to imbue the studio work with the same raw, primordial energy
captures in the Siluetas. This careful selection of historically meaningful materials and
locations appears throughout all of Mendieta’s sculptures and performances, resulting in
the conceptual melding of past, present and future.
Mendieta’s early works invoke a personal relationship where her individual
presence and body are central, essential components. As the art becomes more
abstracted, her physical presence becomes secondary. The analysis of being and
presence are no longer about Mendieta specifically, but a universal. The creation and
presence of this anonymity is what gives her work the power to address being in the
world outside of the confines of the individual. Moreover, the achievement of
authenticity or the realization of conscious choice is sought through methods that are
23 After Mendieta’s death, her sister found bags of earth in her studio labeled with various locations. This indicates her interest in and awareness of history and location.
Jessica Lynne Petty 21
more ambiguous; yet the primal nature of their depiction much easier and immediate to
grasp.
Interestingly, Mendieta’s art expresses many of the ideas in Being and Time
through its physical manifestation in space and lack of concrete temporality. For
Heidegger, time and temporality are inextricably linked to Being-in-the-world because
without a conception of time, humans would have no motivation to be engaged ort
implicated in the world in a human way. Likewise, Mendieta engages objects ontically
in the present in order to seek and impart an ontological understanding of identity. In
short, she uses the materials as cultural “equipment” that is ready-to-hand to begin her
search of self authenticity.24 The media she employs such as blood, soil, sand,
compost, foliage, gravel, rocks and earth serve as natural, organic substitutes for the
flesh. In 1982, she revealing described her work for a grant application: “For the past
twelve years, I have been working out in nature, exploring the routine between myself,
the earth, and art. I have thrown myself into the very elements that produced me, using
the earth as my canvas and my soul as my tools.”25 The flexible temporality and
timelessness of these materials belies a sense of futurity and history. There is a
timeless, ancient quality to each of the elements used as equipment by Mendieta. By
incorporating the past into the present in unique ways, the work moves forward toward
realizing some outcome regarding self-definition.
Significantly, there remains much in Mendieta’s work that is difficult to reconcile
with Heideggerian thought. It has been argued by critics that parts of Being and Time
are anti-democratic, anti-modernist, and anti-liberal. In addition, women are almost
24 The use of equipment is not meant literally but conceptually as it is assigned a meaning through its use.
Jessica Lynne Petty 22
completely absent in his writings, which raises questions about the gender of Dasein
and if it can be applied to females. Mendieta, as a Cuban-American woman, does not
mesh well with the classical, romantic view of art exemplified by German poet Holderlin
in “The Origin of the Work of Art.” With that as his measure, Heidegger might have
considered her work too contemporary, contrived and lacking in language to be
considered great art.
Yet, beyond these incongruities and although the importance and implications of
Mendieta’s work cannot be oversimplified simply to mesh with Heidegger’s concepts,
the comparison created here holds validity due to the complexity of both individuals and
their unexpected intellectual overlap. In addition, the application of the Heideggerian
approach enables a richer, multi-faceted exploration of Ana Mendieta’s identity within
the postmodern world. Reaching beyond the confining titles of female immigrant artist
or murdered wife, her art invokes and explores the timeless issues of death, authenticity
and existence, enabling Heidegger’s intellectual theories to be understood more
concretely.
Heidegger’s ideas are present within Mendieta’s work philosophically because of
the intellectual paradox set forth –the awareness of the possibility of potentiality in life
along with the realization that it is an impossibility because death prevents actualization.
Being and Time explores the transcendental generalizations about the conditions for
any interpretation or world view. Mendieta’s work addresses parallel philosophical
themes of timelessness and existence, serving as a visual method for the application of
Heidegger’s concepts.
25 Ana Mendieta from New York State Council on the Arts Application, March 17, 1982, quoted in Ana Mendieta: A Book of Works (Miami Beach: Grassfield Press, 1993): 41.
Jessica Lynne Petty 23
Heidegger’s Being and Time asserts that we, as humans, have the freedom to
seek out our own potential as beings in the world despite the reality of death on the
horizon. Like ripening, the potential is there – fruit ripens, life might not, but the
potential is there. Dasein is aware of death on the horizon and can choose to live
authentically or inauthentically. Although seemingly depressing, this motivates beings
to exhibit care and concern towards others. Mendieta’s life and work embody the
frustration, anxiety and history of humanity as well as care.
Mendieta holds significance as body in the world, exploring her own being
simultaneously with a more universal concept of being through materiality. She also
explores both literally and figuratively the emphemerality of life and the objects we
encounter as beings. As On Giving Life (1975) [Figure 13], visually and metaphorically
suggests, the life cycle endlessly persists, moving us toward anxiety and potential
authenticity simultaneously. In this work, Mendieta places herself facedown, in a large
grassy field atop a skeleton. The artist presses her lips against the pink clay that has
been loosely molded to cover the head of the bony form in a semblance of a human
face, as if breathing into its mouth. Pressed nose to nose with a skeleton in nature,
Mendieta demonstrates the tenuous nature of life as well as her own authentic power to
“give life”. This complete bodily engagement demonstrates her ability and willingness to
literally immerse herself in a work. Pressing her mouth up against the skeleton, lying
naked on the ground with the grass tickling her thighs, she links her body to her creation
on every level. The taste of the clay against her lips, the bones pressing into her skin
as she lies atop the form – all of these bodily sensations are essential to the work. She
Jessica Lynne Petty 24
willingly puts her body in uncomfortable and challenging scenarios in order to explore
her existence on every possible level.
Mendieta’s work, in its temporality and impact, reveals her Dasein which is
located within a non-fixed time and space. The documentary photographs of these
inaccessible sculpted realities, functioning ultimately as traces of her own identity,
continue to whisper the complexities of contemporary life, affirming Mendieta’s position
as a perspicacious, poetic and powerful artist.26 Glass on Body demonstrates the
physical pliability and possibilities for the human form, and Untitled from the Gunpowder
Series reminds us of our own fleeting mortality, while Mud Figure recalls both the
passage of time as well as times past with its archetypal form and natural materials.
Each of these works serves as equipment leading to unconcealedness. Truth happens
in her work just as Heidegger argues it happens in Van Gogh’s work. Despite the
multitude of existent valid interpretations regarding Ana Mendieta’s oeuvre, her
presentation of human existence from a Heideggerian viewpoint opens a uniquely
compelling and rich discussion. Her place as a female artist, Cuban-American, exile
and creative pioneer remains part of the postmodern art historical canon. Ideally, the
link between Mendieta and Heidegger serves as a new intellectual point of departure in
looking at her art and a creative, modern visual application of Dasein.
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Cabanas, Kaira M. “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, Body I am.’” Women’s Art Journal v20
n1 (Spring/Summer 1999): 12-17. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. ed. Charles Guignon. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993. Chattopadhyay, Collette. “Ana Mendieta’s Sphere of Influence.” Sculpture (Washington,
DC), v18 no5 (June 1999): 34-41. Gelven, Michael. A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time Rev. Ed. Dekalb,
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