Ana Mendieta, born Havana, Cuba 1948-died New York City 1985 Search this
Medium:
gelatin silver print
Dimensions:
sight 38 3/4 x 52 1/2 in. (98.4 x 133.4 cm.)
Type:
Photography-Photoprint
Date:
1980
Gallery Label:
This photograph documents one of the last of the siluetas, or "silhouettes," Mendieta created on an expedition into the eroded streambeds of Iowa. Her earth art borrowed from Catholicism, Caribbean santeriá, and pre-columbian rituals to make images of healing and eternal life-forces. She etched into the exposed earth a primal figure of a woman, giving a literal truth to the santeriá idea of monte adentro, or "going back to the roots." She chose this spot to suggest an ancient devotional gesture newly revealed by nature's cycles. Mendieta used wooden effigies, silhouettes cut into the earth, and often her own body half-buried in the soil to forge a unity between herself and the land. She was the daughter of an early supporter of Fidel Castro who had fallen out of favor and been imprisoned. Her family fled Cuba for the United States in 1961, and the siluetas address Mendieta's feelings of loss and exile.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Exhibition Label:
Mendieta’s Silueta series, produced between 1973 and 1980, explores the connections between nature and the female body. This photograph documents an ephemeral sculpture – in the shape of the artist’s silhouette and loosely evocative of ancient goddess archetypes – carved directly into the earth with minimal disruption of the environment. Mendieta’s Siluetas signify a return to a metaphorical womb and her native Cuban homeland as she molded a feminist subject and land art processes to explore the theme of exile.
Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013
Modern art movement\installation exterior\Mexico Search this
Landscape\mountain\Mountain of San Felipe Search this
Credit Line:
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program
