Ana Mendieta: Untitled, Silueta Series (1978)
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Ana Mendieta
“To question our culture is to question our own existence, our human reality,” the artist Ana Mendieta once said. “This in turn becomes a search, a questioning of who we are and how we will realize ourselves.”
Mendieta's early work as a multidisciplinary artist dealt with themes surrounding violence against women. She often used performance.
In Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints—face)(1972), Mendieta presses her face forcefully against a pane of glass at differing angles. Beyond demonstrating her bodily distress, the distortion of her face across the various images disturbs the work’s function as a portrait. In other words, Mendieta’s photographs of her face do not cohere as representative of herself, thereby disrupting how others view her and draw conclusions about her identity.
Untitled (Facial Cosmetic Variations) shows Mendieta manipulating her appearance using make-up and wigs, in some instances lightening her skin and hair to call into question her racialization in the US.
In the Silueta series (1973–80), Mendieta staged performances where she laid down in natural landscapes or covered her body in organic materials and then documented the resulting imprints or silhouettes. Untitled (1978) shows a dark indentation made in a sandy landscape covered in scrub, the outline of her body suggesting its absence. These performances recall Mendieta’s experience as an exile who was separated from her homeland at a young age. In her Silueta performances she marked the land, leaving the trace of her absent body. This trace perhaps serves as a metaphor for her absence from her birthplace; she was unable to return to Cuba until the 1980s.
"Working in Iowa and Mexico, she carved and shaped her figure into the earth, with arms overhead to represent the merger of earth and sky; floating in water to symbolize the minimal space between land and sea; or with arms raised and legs together to signify a wandering soul. These bodily traces were fashioned from a variety of materials, including flowers, tree branches, moss, gunpowder, and fire, occasionally combined with animals’ hearts or handprints that she branded directly into the ground".
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Ana Mendieta, Untitled from "Silueta Series, Iowa", 1978
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From The Series "Sombras Y Siluetas"
By Leonor Benito De La Lastra
All About Photo Magazine Awards 2023: “Shadows”
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‘’Untitled (from the Silueta series)’’ (alentours 1978)_______par Ana Mendieta.
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Ana Mendieta, Untitled, Silueta Series, Mexico
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she loved me, yes, that I'm still loving her.
1. Mahmoud Darwish // 2. The Separation, Edvard Munch // 3. Holding On To Heartache, Louis Tomlinson // 4.+5. The Banshees Of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh // 6. The Voice I Owe to You (#63), Pedro Salinas // 7. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry // 8. Poem for a Blue Page, Natasha Rao // 9. Feeling Your Absence, Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy // 10. White Ferrari, Frank Ocean // 11.+12. Silueta Series, Ana Mendieta // 13. There Is No Absolution For The Fallen, Only Dying, P.D.
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Imagen de Yagul from the Silueta series by Ana Mendieta, 1973-1977
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The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Ch. 1) // Franz Wright, “Empty Stage” // Gregg Araki, “Nowhere” (1997) // Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems // Ana Mendieta, “Silueta Series” (1976) // Hieu Minh Nguyen, "My First” // The Gibsons of Scilly, “The Minnehaha” (1874) // Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Epilogue) // Euan MacLeod, Figure in Sea above Figure on Hill, 2002 // Ilya Glazunov, Wave, 1987
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