Mendieta Essay

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Ana Mendieta Art made from, with, and of the body aptly describes the collective work of Ana Mendieta (1948-1985). This characteristic creates an immediacy, urgency, and directness that connects universally with those who encounter the work. Mendieta understood the body as a fundamental aspect of human existence. She utilized this understanding to cultivate work that virtually everyone can understand and connect with because it is so basic to humanity. “Earth body”, a term that Mendieta created to describe her work, hybridizes body art and earth art. Body art, which emerged in the late 1960’s, sought to communicate the idea of the artist through the body itself. Earth art or land art moved artistic production to the outdoors in the natural landscape. The fusion of these two approaches forms the basis for the process and conceptual power of Mendieta’s work. The naked female figure is the emblem and form of Mendieta’s earth body works. It was the formal motif that functioned simultaneously as the object and subject. Repeatedly, the female figure served as the form of her work that gave way to the content. Mendieta’s most well known series “Silhueta”, a body of work that characterizes Mendieta’s process and conceptual goals, is comprised of works that continually insert the body into the landscape. In this series, Mendieta inserted her own person or outline of her body into the earth using organic materials. These materials consisted of blood, earth, rocks, twigs, flowers, grass, cloth, pigment, and even mixtures of gunpowder and sugar that was set alight by fire. She documented the placement of her body, whether physical or an imprint, was documented either through Super 8 film, photographs, or video. It is through these means that we are able to view the work today. The subject of Mendieta’s work is conceptualized by the use of the human body. The body is the
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