2017 Catalogue Archive

In the 1970s and 80s, Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta created a wide-ranging, experimental body of work that included land art, performance art, sculpture, drawings, and film. Through her experimental use of these media, Mendieta used her own body to explore the connection between the body and landscape, violence against women, and religious rituals, among many other subjects. Mendieta is perhaps best known for her Silueta series – performative works the artist referred to as “earth-body sculptures” that the artist documented with the camera. Here, she has incised her body into the muddy Iowa landscape (where she attended college), merging the female form with the earth in a quietly resonant, ephemeral work. Mendieta’s work has been the subject of six major museum retrospectives, and her work is included in numerous museum collections worldwide.