Ana Mendieta: Traces of Life

Arbol de la Vita (1970).

Whoever is familiar with Hermann Hesse’s book Pictor's Metamorphoses will see immediately the relationship between the human being and the earth, and will quickly relate it to the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), the creator of "earth-body."

Although her career short -- she died at the early age of 37 by falling from the window of the 34^th-floor-apartment in New York where she was living with her husband the artist Carl Andre --  Mendieta left a prolific amount of work.

By joining human features like blood and primary elements such as fire, water, and earth, she creates a unique language which is provocative, impacting, and at the same time intimate and engaging.

Mendieta was born into a politically active Catholic family in Havana under Fidel Castro’s regime. Immediately before her thirteenth birthday, she was sent with her sister to America, where she studied art in Iowa.

The pain and the separation from her country created a cultural displacement and exile inside her that she used and developed in her creative process, which she named "earth-body." She perceived this separation from the family (she rejoined her family in Havana after 18 years) as a sort of orphanhood and used this suffering as a driving force for her art -- opening a dialogue between the landscape and her own body. This dialogue was the main component of her work and is present in all her oeuvre.

Her performances and sculptures are a combination of the Afro-Cuban ritual santería and a metaphor of death, life, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. Always interested in themes such as identity, female violence, displacement, and physical transformation, Mendieta created work such as Rape Scene (1973), a documentation with slides of violent crime, using her own body and her own apartment. Inspired by santería, a Yoruban-Christian religion practiced in Cuba, as well as by her Roman Catholic education, Mendieta used ox blood in her actions and performances to create stains of her body, to trace the contour of her body or create an image of her body, as in the work Untitled (Self-portrait with Blood) (1973). She stated that the blood was not a negative force.

Alongside her interest for the Afro-Cuban spiritual ritual, Mendieta was interested in ancient and indigenous cultures. Witnesses of these interests are works such as Bird Transformation (1972), a performance concerning transmutation in which she is naked and her body is completely covered with feathers.

Mujeres Muralistas or How I "Got Into" College

A Tribute to the Mujeres Muralistas in the Mission Distroct, via Flickr/Franco Folini

Last summer, I decided to pursue an M.F.A. I had recently earned a Master of Arts in Art History, yet the desire to develop my skills as an artist tugged at me throughout my Art History studies. So here I am, starting anew. In order to prepare myself, I decided to take an Intro to Mural Art course, because it pertained to my favorite area in San Francisco--the vibrant Mission district, which is also commonly understood as the "Latino neighborhood."

During one of the early class sessions, my instructor was discussing his early career and passion for mural painting. He was so enamored with becoming a working artist that he aggressively pursued noted Mexican mural artist David Alfaro Siqueiros until he was able to work as his apprentice. He also talked about his visits to several universities in Mexico; during this part of the discussion, he revealed a longstanding cultural bias about women, the arts, and education -- that they do not belong together. The instructor looked me square in the eyes, and said, "You'll appreciate this story."

1000 WORDS: Rebuilding

When most of the men in the village of San Miguel Amatitlan in Mexico left to find jobs in other cities or countries, the women in the village took on new roles and new challenges. From Marcela Taboada's work in Focusing on Latin America, "Women of Clay."