Research - Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, stone worker, painter and video craftsman who is best known for her "earth-body" work of art. Born in Havana, Mendieta immigrate United States in 1961. During her career, Mendieta made work in Cuba, Mexico, Italy, and the United States. Her work was to some degree personal, drawing from her history of being displaced from her local country Cuba, and focused on subjects counting women's liberation, violence, life, passing, character, and belonging. Her works are for the most part related with the four essential components of nature. Mendieta regularly centered on an otherworldly and physical association with the Earth. She felt that by uniting her body with the Earth once more: "Through my earth/body figures, I ended up one with the earth ... I become an expansion of nature and nature gets to be an expansion of my body."

She created over 200 works of art using earth as a sculptural medium, however for my researach I am focusing on her portraiture and how she portrays people within her work. In the images below she frequently deviates from standard norms; in each of the examples of her work below there is something you wouldn't expect that is rather unusual. In the first (untitled) portrait with her facial hair transplants, she is shown to have a moustache (her facial hair transplants), which of course is rather unexpected on a woman. Since the time this portrait was taken, society has come to become a bit more accepting of gender roles and gender depictions, but at the time in 1972, this mostly would have been seen as a controversial piece of art.

The other two portraits depict a distorted face almost as if there is a sheet of glass in front of her. The piece of art perhaps represents being restricted by society's norms and the lack of freedom of expression in the place she grew up in. I think that they are interesting pieces of work as it shows that she is capturing herself in a rather unusual light, with her face distorted against a sheet of glass as most people when creating a representation of themselves would try to make themselves look good or put themselves in a better light. These works can be almost seen as satirical upon first glance but when you think about the deeper meaning beneath them and the message that she is trying to communicate, it seems rather serious.

Reference list

Alison Jacques Gallery. (n.d.). Ana Mendieta - Overview. [online] Available at: https://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/47-ana-mendieta/overview/#:~:text=Working%20from%20the%20early%201970s [Accessed 13 Apr. 2021].

icamiami.org. (n.d.). Untitled (Glass on Face) | Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. [online] Available at: https://icamiami.org/collection/ana-mendieta-untitled-glass-on-face-1972/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2021].

The Museum of Modern Art. (n.d.). Ana Mendieta. Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints--face). 1972 | MoMA. [online] Available at: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/153237?artist_id=3924&page=1&sov_referrer=artist [Accessed 13 Apr. 2021].

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Ana Mendieta. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Mendieta [Accessed 13 Apr. 2021].

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