Untitled (burial pyramid)

Ana Mendieta – MoMA

Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) was a Cuban-American artist renowned for her ‘earth art,’ powerfully exploring themes of identity, feminism, displacement & nature through performance and sculpture. Her work continues to inspire artists today and stands as a testament to the transformative power of art and its ability to heal, empower, and challenge the status quo. ### About – ANA MENDIETA Ana Mendieta was born in Havana on November 18, 1948. At the age of 12, after her father joined anti-Castro counterrevolutionary forces, Mendieta was sent to Dubuque, Iowa, as part of Operation Peter Pan, a mass exodus of children fleeing the new regime. This separation from family and homeland became a defining trauma, deeply influencing her artistic trajectory. Although she studied with Hans Breder (b. 1935) at the University of Iowa, Iowa City (BA 1969, MA 1972, MFA 1977), her primary residence was in New York from 1978 until her death in 1985. Mendieta is best known for what she called “earth-body works,” and her practice centered on themes of the female body, death, cultural displacement, and transformation. While her oeuvre may be seen as autobiographical, the use of overlapping forms between landscape and the body in her film, video, and photographic work is aligned also with land art and allowed her work to transgress the bounds of personal experience to convey universal modes of being. Having moved to the United States at a young age, Mendieta had an interest in Cuban culture and often utilized the aesthetic and ritualistic tones of Santería (a religious practice common in Cuba) through the natural symbols of earth, blood, water, and fire. This is seen in Mendieta’s most enduring and widely collected work, Silueta (Silhouette, 1973–80). In this series the body is primarily noted through its absence as the artist explored spirituality and performance while also highlighting the historical erasure of, and violence against, women. Mendieta was deeply immersed in feminist art practices of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and her work of the period was aligned with that of contemporaries such as Hannah Wilke (1940–1993) or Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939), who were also extending their visual art practices into the field of body-performance. In *Untitled (Body Tracks) *(1974), Mendieta eschewed the ubiquitous male gaze, instead using her body to create art forms. In this video performance she stands facing a wall with her arms stretched overhead and slowly falls to her knees, leaving behind a bright red trail of blood in two vertical lines tracking toward each other but never converging. ### Selected Solo Exhibitions *1979 ***Ana Mendieta*, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn *1987 ***Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective*, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York *1997 ***Ana Mendieta*, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona *2004 ***Ana Mendieta: Earth Body; Sculpture and Performance, 1972–1985*, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC *2011 ***Ana Mendieta*, Art Institute of Chicago ### Selected Bibliography *Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective. *New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987. Gloria Moure, ed. *Ana Mendieta*. Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Santiago de Compostela, Spain: Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporánea, 1977. Stephanie Rosenthal, ed. *Traces: Ana Mendieta*. London: Hayward, 2013. Olga M. Viso. *Ana Mendieta: Earth Body; Sculpture and Performance, 1972–1985*. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, 2004. ———. *Unseen Mendieta: The Unpublished Works of Ana **Mendieta*. Munich: Prestel, 2008.