The Body in Art - Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was a Cuban American performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist. She was born in Havanna however at the age of 12 she and her sister were sent to the United States through a collaborative programme run by the US and Catholic charities to flee Fidel Castro’s dictatorship - 14000 children emigrated to the US on their own during this process. She spent her first few weeks in refugee camps and then moved around various foster homes and institutions. In 1966 Mendieta was reunited with her mother and brother. Her father joined them in 1979 after having spent 18 years in a political prison. This was clearly very traumatic for her being away from both her family and her culture. This has had a huge impact on her art.

At the University of Iowa she studied art and intermedia. At university her work focused on blood and violence towards women. Her interest in spiritual things and primitive rituals developed during this time. She said that she faced a great deal of discrimination in art school. 
I look at her history and acknowledge that some people have so much to deal with in their lives, they have felt and experienced the extremes of life. I would imagine her to be a person who could connect to the real highs in life but also the real lows. She had experienced being alienated and as a result she sided with people who had been discriminated against.

Untitled rape scene 1973 - no photos available, not that I wanted to look at them anyway. She created three photographs in response to a rape and murder of a student on campus. The first photo was set up in her apartment where she presented as the victim of the horrifically aggressive incident. She had invited her fellow students to her apartment where she was in position. It forced her viewers to reflect on their responsibility in relation to the violence and provided a forum to discuss sexual violence. This act also allowed the murdered student to have a identity, Mendieta forced people to think about the victim. The other two photos were staged on the campus to a bigger audience. Mendieta didn't play it down, people were confronted with horror. Violence is one of her themes and it begs the question of her own experience with violence.

Mendieta’s work was often autobiographical, referring to her history of being displaced from Cuba, and focussing on themes such as feminism, violence, life, death, identity, place and belonging. She often focussed on a spiritual and physical connection to the earth. She felt by uniting her body to the earth she would become whole again. “Through my earth/body sculptures, I have become one with the earth. I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body.” She described it as “crucial for me to be part of all my art works.”

 
Silueta Series- 1973-1980. This involved Mendieta creating female silhouettes in nature – in mud, and grass – with natural materials ranging from leaves and twigs to blood, and making body prints or printing her outline or silhouette onto a wall. She felt her use of her body and nature was as a direct result of her having being torn from her homeland. “I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds which unite me to the universe.”

 
The Silueta series started off with things like carving her figure into the earth with e.g. arms overhead to represent the merger of earth and sky, or with arms raised and legs together to represent a wandering soul. They were fashioned by things like flowers, branches, moss, gunpowder and fire. By 1978 Siluetas gave way to ancient goddess forms carved into rocks, shaped from sand or incised in clay beds.

 
Body tracks 1982 are long blurry marks that Mendieta’s hands and forearms made as they slid down a large piece of white paper during a performance heightened by pulsing Cuban music. 

Drawing from the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria, she uses animal blood and tempura paint to create imprints of her hands on white paper. She repeats the ritualistic gestures in silence throughout the performance, forming variations of her silhouette. These acts can be interpreted as Mendieta’s political stance against violence inflicted upon women.

Thinking about Mendieta's art makes me question the purpose and worth of my own artistic attempts. I do want my art to have purpose, meaning and feeling however I also want it to have beauty. While I accept there is a pleasing symmetry in the above Body Tracks image there is little beauty and it seems that Mendieta didn't intend there to be any. Her art is about challenging us, making the viewer think and often feel very uncomfortable. She was a woman who was aching, she had a longing for her home, family, peace and her art reflects her trying to make sense of this. She poured her feelings into her work and her feelings even jump out from the photographs of her work.
I do like some of her artworks especially her silueta series. I like art done outdoors anyway, standing stones, natural stone sculptures etc appeal to me and some of her figures have the look of stone sculpture even though they have generally now perished. I generally consider the female body to be a thing of beauty however her use of things like blood cancels out any beauty, I think.
Mendieta met a violent end, whether it be an act of suicide in the course of arguing with her husband, or as a result of murder. This tragic act doesn't seem surprising given the life she experienced however she was clearly a life force and as such her work is still powerful today.



Wikipedia

Guggenheim.org

Hemispheric Institute

Theartstory.org