Ana Mendieta

Havana, Cuba, 1948-1985

            Ana Mendieta was born in the city of Havana in 1948 and spent her final days in New York, her place of residence with her husband, American sculptor and poet Carl Andre. She left Cuba at the age of twelve. Her father was a political figure on the island, initially aligned with Fidel Castro's government and later as an opponent. He and her mother decided to smuggle Ana and her sister to the United States to attend a Catholic school. During the years away from her family, she found solace in painting. Later, she continued her studies at the University of Iowa under the guidance of Hans Breder, a German artist dedicated to performance art and video art. With that spirit, Mendieta engaged in her own style: blending performance, body art, land art, photography, and video.

            As a protagonist of art that is at times raw and violent, she made her body a means of expression. For example, she took elements from the language of body art to use her own nude body in her performances and works. One of her notable works is the Silueta series (1973-1980), where she imprinted her figure into the earth, capturing her outlines against a variety of landscapes and incorporating elements like grass, flowers, branches, and clay, with the aim of expressing her imagination and ideas about creation, faith, and femininity. Her work can also be read as an experience of the pain caused by abuse and violence against women. During her university years, she even recreationally staged a rape scene to denounce these abuses on college campuses.

            In the early morning of September 8, 1985, after an argument with Andre, Mendieta fell from the window and died instantly. To this day, no one knows exactly what happened. Her husband was charged with homicide, although he was acquitted after a three-year trial. The artist gained fame and recognition after her violent death. Her work made her a reference point for movements and activists with a queer and dissident perspective who reclaimed her figure to emphasize ethnic and gender inequality and to denounce sexist positions in general, and in the art world in particular. As a migrant woman, she had a critical view of her origins and identity and became aware of her racialized heritage living in the United States. Her early displacement and the impossibility of feeling like a full citizen in the adoptive country were determining elements in her work marked by feelings of exile and loss.

            Like transcendent conjurations, her creations become a legacy that allows proposing and contemporaneously thinking about a non-hegemonic feminism, where the body is a political territory. Or, as sociologist and activist Michelly Aragão points out, a living archive to strengthen other decolonial feminisms.