When Ana Mendieta began making films, she was drawn like many artists to the Super 8 format for its ease and affordability. Mendieta turned to the camera to record her long-running Silueta Series, in which she inscribed the outline of her body into nature. Film, as a medium, aligned with the artist’s interest in process and her wish to convey the immediacy of her chosen sites.
These three films revolve around themes of metamorphosis and identity. In each, a transformation is enacted or implied: white gunpowder turns to dark ash, a sand sculpture seems to beckon the flow of water, and the artist herself appears covered in feathers carried ashore by ocean waves. She made these works in places of personal significance: Cuba, the birthplace she left in exile at age 12, and didn’t return to for two decades; Iowa, where she was resettled and later pursued her art studies; and Mexico, a site of her meaningful immersion into Latin American culture. While exploring her experience of displacement, Mendieta was most compelled by universal questions of existence and belonging, which she considered through enduring connections between body and land.
Organized by Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator, Department of Film, with Rachel Rosin, Curatorial Assistant, departments of Curatorial Affairs and Drawings and Prints.
