The Silueta Series
ANA MENDIETA
ANA MENDIETA, 1979
‘My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source’, said Mendieta, ‘Through my earth/body sculptures, I become one with the earth’. Yet it is hard to look at these works of unity and not see harbingers of death. Here, Mendieta’s body is made of algae on the shore of an anonymous marsh. Reminiscent of Ophelia drowning, the silhouette could just as easily be mistaken as a natural form as it could a body washed ashore. Mendieta created her silhouettes from water, plants, fire, rock and the natural world around her. In leaving her imprint, she has to engage in the abstract imagery of violence. She becomes a spirit, a whisper of a body no longer there.She embodies nature by mimicking death.