Ana Mendieta - Body and Earth

I wrote an essay on earth artist Ana Mendieta for one of my final essays for my under-grad degree. I had never looked into her work before, but it's pretty interesting, so I thought I would share it here too. 

Fig 1. Untitled (from the Silueta series) 1973-1977. 1973. Silver dye bleach print.

Femininity and the earth are intrinsically linked; they are synonymous with the word ‘mother’. Both are the foundation for life yet disrespected by those they birth. This connection between the feminine and the earth is explored through Ana Mendieta’s artwork, along with a continued theme of pain and violence, which have also become synonymous with the feminine experience. Some see this as pairing of women and earth as an essentialist notion, but I want to argue that the presence of the earth provides comfort and nurture to a woman who has no choice but to be assigned to a cycle of experiencing pain. Her artwork also explores the notion of co-existence and communion, which becomes more relevant when viewing them in the light of the ever-impending climate crisis. Mendieta’s work has thus been imbued with more meaning as time goes on; perhaps outside of her consideration. I will discuss four of her works within these contexts, starting with two pieces from her Silueta series – Untitled and a still from her video work, Anima, Silueta De Cohetes (Soul, Silhouette of Fireworks). Then I will move on to Tree of Life, and one of her last works before her death, Nile Born. 

Fig 2. Still from Anima, Silueta De Cohetes (Soul, Silhouette of Fireworks) 1976

Mendieta’s most famous works is her series named Silueta, created from 1973-78, and consisting of over two hundred earth-body works. She burned (see fig. 2), carved and molded her silhouette into the landscapes of Iowa and Mexico; at times becoming a part of nature itself (see fig. 1). This is a very literal take on the connection between bodies and the Earth, but a necessary one, I think, that had not been done in this way before. Untitled (fig. 1) prompts the viewer to consider what would happen if humans ceased to exist on the earth. It also presents the body as a vessel for life, specifically flowers. One also can’t help but wonder how it would feel to be that close to the earth, how the rocks and dirt might feel, and if the flowers smell nice. Mendieta had a master’s degree in painting, but said that: “my paintings were not real enough for what I wanted to convey… I decided for the images to have the magic qualities I had to work directly with nature. I had to go to the source, to mother earth.” She becomes a part of the source with these works too. Looking at Anima, Silueta De Cohetes (fig 2.) is where we can see these ideas of violence come in. A soul silhouette created from fireworks, creating a terrifyingly beautiful vision of danger, once again reminding us how easily destructible we are. The use of fireworks is very interesting to me here. They are used in times of celebration, and we can assume the silhouette that is represented is Mendieta’s. It brings images of the Salem Witch Trials, in which the destruction of women was a celebration. Mendieta is perhaps suggesting that we are not far removed from this same situation. This work also brings the idea of pain and violence being built into women from birth; having fire built within. This connects directly to the fact that the earth is fiery at its core, perhaps suffering from the inside but we have no way of knowing. I find that these two separate works juxtapose many of Mendieta’s ideas. In terms of her earth-body works, “she saw her earth/body sculptures… as communion, or a kind of merger with the landscape. As putting her stamp on the earth, and finally as animating or anthropomorphising the earth.” as well as “reflect[ing], among other preoccupations, her search for the motherland and mother womb, after having been separated from her mother at such young age.”Anima, Silueta De Cohetes is the opposite of these notions in the fact that fire does not exist in harmony with the earth, nor with human bodies. It highlights the violence that humans are capable of, but also serves as an emblem of re-birth and renewal. As Kaira Cabañas says in her piece on Mendieta, ““Each silueta contains elements of transformation – fires, rivers, oceans, and other natural sources of energy highlighting the forces of creation and destruction in the world.” The viewer can choose to see fire as a force of destruction or renewal, just as the viewer can choose to see the fireworks as celebratory or terrifying. 

Fig 3. Tree of Life, 1976

Mendieta continued exploring this literal relationship between her body and the earth with her work Tree of Life (Fig 3.) in 1976. With this piece, she combined her body with the earth itself, coating herself in mud before standing at the base of the tree. As with her Silueta series, this piece invokes sensory responses from the viewer. We imagine how it would feel to coat ourselves in mud, how it would smell, how long it took her to wash it off. She becomes the earth; becomes a part of the mother, thus returning to the womb. This idea of the maternal is more closely explored in one of her later works, Nile Born, in 1984. The Museum of Modern Art describe it most accurately on their website: the work “embodies the communion of a female figure and the land… a large inner channel suggests a vaginal cavity. The silhouette represents the body in its most basic form.” She began to step away from being present herself in her work as her practice developed. Perhaps this piece could be viewed as being “linked to essentialist feminism because it incorporates universal fertility goddess forms, [but] the work nevertheless pays homage to a decimated culture. The use of essentialist language to evaluate her work duplicates the fixity of patriarchal categories;” but as Cabañas asserts, to view her work in this way emphasizes the restrictions that Mendieta was trying to escape. This work is also much more interpretative than the previous works I have discussed, and in some ways more haunting. It almost resembles a body bag, or an ancient coffin. Despite its vaginal connotations it continues to resemble a silhouette of a body, thus once again tying in the idea of mothering. Additionally, the title itself connotes ideas of coming from the earth, here being birthed from The Nile River. I think this is a very apt work to end my discussion with, as it ties in all the themes and ideas I have considered. It is a return to the mother; a return to the womb; and made out of material from the earth, thus a return to earth herself. Mendieta died a suspicious death a year after creating this piece, and the knowledge of this imbues her art with added layers of meaning. Her work then serves as an uncanny foreshadowing of the end of her life. 

Fig 4. Nile Born, 1984. Sand and binder on wood. 

I want to return to the synonymity between women and the earth and the essentialist notion that many critics reduce her work to. Mendieta herself refers to the earth as being a maternal force for her, and this alone should expel the criticism that her work depends on a reductive form of feminism. She is not trying to make a larger claim about femininity or what it means to be a woman, instead “address the place of the body in nature,” and muse on “the objectification of her existence.” Her work is entirely personal. In an article from AnOther magazine published in 2019 about Earthbound, a solo exhibition on Antwerp, this quote is featured:

“’I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body, based on my own silhouette,’ Mendieta said in 1981… ‘I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb. My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source.’”

While we can use her art to make larger claims about humanity, it is not what Mendieta was aiming to do with her art. Perhaps critics who view her work in this way instead need to reflect on their own experience of femininity, and why it is that they feel as though Mendieta was addressing them directly. The truth is that we are all held by the earth, and we will all return to the earth in some way upon our death. To associate femininity with our whole existence is not reductive in any way, in my opinion. Her work is not reductive of the feminine form, it should rather be seen as a reminder of the violence that the female form endures. Perhaps this is why we tend to associate women’s bodies with the earth. Not because of the ‘mother nature’ trope, but rather because both become so accustomed with the feelings of disrespect, violence and pain that accompany them during their lifetimes. It also serves as a reminder that the earth itself is not capable of inflicting this violence upon as, just as mother cannot harm child. Fire features in her work as a symbol of destruction, but in the work I discussed earlier (Fig 2.) she chose to use man-made fireworks, thus expanding on this idea. Humans ourselves are a subject of the themes seen in her work; we represent the cycle of life and birth while also being the perpetuators of violence. This intrinsic synonymity between women and the earth also suggests that the main source of this violence is man, because, as I mentioned before, how can mother harm child? While Mendieta’s art was a form of self-healing for her, 

 

The idea of communion is also something Mendieta repeatedly refers to and explores within her work. The words itself has a certain religious connotation, which is notable because Mendieta was raised Catholic, “but developed an interest in the rituals involved with Santería, a culturally predominant Cuban religion, and it deeply influenced her work in her choice of materials and settings.”Mendieta continuously plays with the idea of connection and intimacy between body and earth; women and earth; body and birth; earth and death; her work is overall “a testimony to her personal search and critical reflection on the human condition.” Under the lens of capitalism and the climate crisis, we can view Mendieta’s work as critiquing the lack of communion in our current reality. It can almost be viewed as a critique of the art world itself, as Kirsty Baker says: 

“Caring remains a deeply undervalued concept in Pākehā society. This devaluation stems, largely, from gendered expectations around care work. The longstanding feminization of care may have its ideological roots in Victorian England, but it retains a powerful influence in the contemporary world.”

I think the terms of caring and sharing are synonymous, just as women and the earth are. Mendieta’s suggestion that we merge more with the earth is also a suggestion that we learn to care more about it, just as we should learn to care more about the feminine presence that it bestows. Baker’s proposal that care has been feminized can be extended to the climate crisis – have we neglected to care about the earth because it is deemed as too feminine? Instead of viewing Mendieta’s work as a reductive and simple form of feminine existence, we need to see them as an example of communion and care for the earth and personal history. Her literal merging of her body with nature suggests the almost horrifying thought that we are stuck on earth until we die, no matter what happens to it. Susan Best describes this: 

“Mendieta's images combine, then, a kind of ritualized communion with nature – a celebration of its power and diversity in which the body participates – and paradoxically, alongside the sense of transience, also a faint sense of immobility, and restriction.”

We can choose to feel trapped by our bodily existence, or share our existence with others and with the earth. We are also forced to experience the earth just be being alive. The communion between our bodies and nature is inescapable. When thinking about that, the notion of care becomes imperative when thinking about the climate crisis, as our existence depends on the health of the earth, just as the health of the child depends upon the health of the mother; “The body is dependent on the environment.” We cannot heal without communion, just as we cannot heal the earth without sharing the burden. Communion, care, and community are the key principles to a guaranteed future. Mendieta suggests this through her consistent merging of different earth elements, using her own body as the mediator. 

 

To view Mendieta’s art as being essentially feminist is to wholly misunderstand the multiplicity of meanings her work contains. While she has always described her work as being personal to her exploration of her identity and her place in the world, it perhaps unintentionally examines the necessity of female presence in the world. It forces us to think about our own personal relationships with both our bodies and the earth. Although it may not be necessary to literally merge our bodies with the earth in order to sustain a future, Mendiata shows that it is imperative that we take a more considered approach to the impact our bodies have on the earth, while simultaneously making a critique about the way we treat mothers and the feminine body. 

Thank you for reading! <3 

Bibliography:

1.     The Museum of Modern Art. “Ana Mendieta. Nile Born. 1984 | MoMA,” 2022. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81059.

2.     AnOther. “Inside a New Exhibition Devoted to Earth Art Pioneer Ana Mendieta.” AnOther, May 30, 2019. https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11743/ana-mendieta-pioneer-earth-body-works-middelheim-museum-antwerp.

3.     Baker, Elizabeth. “To Be Magic: The Art of Ana Mendieta through an Ecofeminist to Be Magic: The Art of Ana Mendieta through an Ecofeminist Lens Lens,” 2016. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=honorstheses#:~:text=Though%20she%20was%20raised%20Catholic. 

4.     Baker, Kirsty. “Towards an Ethics of Care.” Artnow, March 11, 2022. https://artnow.nz/essays/towards-an-ethics-of-care. 

5.     Bergmann, Sigurd, and Forrest Clingerman. Arts, Religion, and the Environment. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

6.     BEST, SUSAN. “THE SERIAL SPACES of ANA MENDIETA.” Art History 30, no. 1 (April 20, 2007): 57–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.2007.00532.x.  

7.     Brisbane, Institute of Modern Art. “Susan Best, ‘Ana Mendieta’s Emotional Ties.’” Institute of Modern Art, March 2019. https://www.ima.org.au/resources/susan-best-ana-mendietas-emotional-ties-2/.

8.     Cabañas, Kaira M. “Ana Mendieta: ‘Pain of Cuba, Body I Am.’” Woman’s Art Journal 20, no. 1 (1999): 12–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358840. 

9.     Editors, Artspace. “The Secret of Ana Mendieta’s Mystical Cave Women.” Artspace, February 10, 2016. https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/ana-mendieta-stone-women-53518.

10.  Szymanek, Angelique. “Bloody Pleasures: Ana Mendieta’s Violent Tableaux.” Signs 41, no. 4 (2016): 895–925. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26552858?sid=primo&saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiJjM2U3ZDg2Ny00OGYxLTQ5YzQtOWUzMy1hNWU0ZjI4ZjlmYTYiLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyJlMDBkOGEyOS0yMjVkLTRkNzMtYjJjMi0wNmRkNGQ1OTdhYTQiXX0#metadata_info_tab_contents. 

11.  Trotman, Nat. “Untitled: Silueta Series.” Guggenheim, 1978. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/5221.