Ana Mendieta

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.

Artist, Ana Mendieta, narrates as corresponding images of her work in both still and moving images highlight her themes and meanings behind her work.

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

Ana Mendieta, 1975

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

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

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

Ana Mendieta, 1975

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

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

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.

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

Untitled is the first of over 100 films created by Ana Mendieta. By scratching and painting directly onto the film’s emulsion, she formed a filmic painting of fields of dancing colors, comprised of vibrant strokes of blue and splashes of red. Though Mendieta experimented with various technical processes, this is the only moving-image work in which she manipulated the film’s surface.

No synopsis available yet.

Depicts a female form crafted from mud, whose centre (her womb) erupts into smoke which eventually leaves behind a scarred mark in the earth body.

Blood Inside Outside, demonstrates the pioneering feminist artist’s exploration of the multiple layers of meaning ascribed to blood—from death to rebirth.

Ana Mendieta, 1975

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.

"Esculturas Rupestres" (Rupestrian Sculptures) was made in Jaruco Park outside of Havana. The low relief sculptures that resembled petroglyphs, were influenced by Ana Mendieta’s interest in the indigenous Taíno people of Cuba.

Captures students at Henry Sabin Elementary School in Iowa City holding a circular parachute and pulling down to catch the air's resistance.

A haunting Santerían morsel of mysticism, ritual, and artist-as-subject from the towering Cuban-American.

United States 1974, Super 8 film transferred to digital, colour, silent, 4 min

Sand and water meet in a glimmering silhouette.

An ephemeral, feminist earth-body performance piece featuring 47 black ritual candles arranged in the silhouette of her body.

Mendieta, Ana: Burial Pyramide, Yagul, Mexico.

In Ana Mendieta’s Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), the artist’s silhouetted form is replicated as an effigy with blazing fireworks, the flickering embers gradually extinguishing until there is but a single spark left to stave off total darkness.

1. Sweating Blood, November 1973 2. Blood Writing, February 1974 3. Body Tracks, March 1974 4. Burial Pyramid, Summer 1974 5. Untitled, Summer 1974 6. Flower Silueta No. 2, June 1975 7. Alma Silueta En Fuego No. 2, November 1975 8. Silueta de Arena, August 1978 9. Isla, 1981 10. Filmworks, August 1980 11. Esculturas Rupestres, June 1981 12. Anima, 1976 13. Fire Silueta 14. Untitled Silueta 15. Esculturas Rupestres, June 1981 (either mislabelled, or split into two parts or outtakes)

Film by Ana Mendieta, 1978

United States / Mexico 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 4 min

A ritual brings the stone heart to life.

This film is a performance that the artist undertook at Old Man’s Creek, Sharon Center, Iowa City, Iowa. The performance was recorded on Super-8 film and 35mm slides. The film shows Mendieta standing naked on the sandy bank on one side of the creek, in front of flowing water and a steep mud bank on the other side. After looking directly at the camera, she raises a flask to shoulder level and begins pouring blood down her chest, legs and stomach. She then reaches over her shoulders to include her back, and covers her arms before casting the empty vessel aside. Dropping to the ground, she plunges face-first into a heap of white feathers where she slowly rolls back and forth, adhering the feathers to the sticky blood on her skin. Finally, she rises slowly to stand with her arms held away from her body but bent at the elbow as though she is imagining being a bird with wings. She holds this position for a few seconds before the film ends.

No synopsis available yet.

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

Film by Ana Mendieta, 1981

Film by Ana Mendieta, 1981

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.

Ana Mendieta, 1974

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

Some of the films are presented in tandem in darkened interiors that resemble the caves where Mendieta sculpted some of her final works. One film depicts the artist lying naked in a creek, suggesting cleansing and rebirth. In another film, "Keane College Volcano" at Galerie Lelong, the wind is gently stirring a mound of ash that swirls up from a stone form's breast. The bluish powder twirls up and teasingly dissipates. This breathless little dance,this choreographed chance of the elements is the best. Ana Mendieta may have written her name on the earth in disappearing ink, but she did it so well that we can't erase it.

United States 1979, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min

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

This film shows the artist, covered in white bird feathers, running along the shoreline of La Ventosa beach in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Super-8 film transferred to high-definition digital support, colour, silent. Fundamento Palo Monte belongs to the Siluetas, a series of ephemeral works that the artist made between 1973 and 1981 and then recorded on film or in photographs. Made in Iowa, Fundamento Palo Monte shows a form hollowed from the ground and filled with white gunpowder, with three stones in the position of the heart. The fire consumes the silhouette from the base to the head. At times, the flames and thick white smoke obscure the form in the ground, which then reappears through the thinning wisps of smoke as the powder burns out. What remains is the charred figure, the work of earth, fire and air. The time of combustion and the time of the film are one.

Single channel, super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent.

United States 1980, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 4 min

United States 1978, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min