Ana Mendieta

United States / Mexico 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min

A self-portrait, Mirage exposes Mendieta's naked body in nature reflected in a mirror. She holds a gourd and stabs it open to let its seeds fly away.

United States 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 1 min

Mendieta, Ana: Burial Pyramide, Yagul, Mexico.

Volcán captures a raised mound of earth set against a grassy riverbank. A white silhouette in the shape of a female body lies atop of the form. The same shot then cuts to a frame where the base of the white figure spontaneously starts smoking. It then quickly sets aflame. As it combusts, a deep cavity is revealed, even as it is cloaked in growing flames and smoke, evoking a volcanic eruption. Finally, the entire body is engulfed so that only ashes remain in the negative space, human remains. Mendieta short the work in 1975 at Old Man’s Creek in Sharon Center, Iowa, near where the artist was living at the time.

Film by Ana Mendieta, 1981

United States / Cuba 1981, Super 8 transferred to digital, black and white, silent, 2 min

No description available.

A 1975 work, Butterfly makes use of polarized graphic effects as Ana Mendieta's spectral body sprouts iridescent wings.

Featured in Ana Mendieta's "Selected Performance Works"

Film by Ana Mendieta, 1978

A single-channel video (transferred from Super-8 film), color, silent, where we watch the artist from behind as she traces a rough outline of her body in blood against a white wall.

In X-Ray, Ana Mendieta uses a Cinefluorography unit, a medical tool usually employed for diagnostic and research procedures. In Mendieta’s hands, she takes us inside her own head, filming her own X-Rayed skull while talking.

This beautiful film is a portrait of the life and work of Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta. Mendieta used her own body, the raw materials of nature, and Afro-Cuban religion to express her feminist political consciousness and poetic vision. Interview footage with Mendieta and her own filmed records of her earthworks and performances are incorporated to render a vivid testament to her energy and extraordinary talent after her tragic, untimely death in 1985.

United States 1972, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 7 min

Mendietas last film was made off the coast of Florida, the silhouette points to Cuba, while the tropical waters undulate around the sandy earthwork.

Considered to be the first of Ana Mendieta's video, performance and film based pieces responding to the death and murder of Sara Ann Otten on March 13 of 1973.

United States 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min

Sand and water meet in a glimmering silhouette.

United States 1975, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 6 min