Ana Mendieta, Silueta Series, 1973-80

Mini intro

Date: 1973-80

Artist: Ana Mendieta, died being pushed out of a window and left her last imprint

Location: Mexico, shares some religious beliefs with Cuba

Key facts

Taken away from Cuba so that she wouldn’t grow up to be a revolutionary - similar to re-education camps in China - youth taken away

Land and ownership - she is an immigrant to America

Romanticism feels of being connected to the land

this is one of her only land art works - messages with anti-white feminism

Her outline references how police marks out bodies of crime scenes

traces left behind links to her other work

Influences

Socio-political message, always an outline of her body but she is not present - being taken away from places with no traces left behind

social activism - feminist - 2nd wave feminism,

Otherness

Impermanence - most only existed a couple of mins, only exist in photos, is it a performance, was the art the material or the photograph which is required to represent the land art, ideas of timelessness

No humans are described typically in Land Art

Reasoning

Felt pressures of being a non white woman

We all have a similar human body silhouette with no defining racial features

More than 200 earth body art (early ideas of performance art, using her body as a medium in the landscape) - referencing Richard Long and Robert Smithson, encouraging the use of