Critical Artist Expression: By Amber Torres

Ana Mendieta

(photo: https://www.tiff.net/films/silueta-sangrienta/)

Ana Mendieta is an artist that I first learned about only last semester but have come to completely adore in the short time since. While wondering throughout the Newark Museum in late fall, I stumbled across a photograph up on the second floor that at first glance I believed to be some type of art piece from a different culture dated years ago. It was a black and white photo of an outline simply sitting in dirt. When I read the description just below the frame, I was shocked to discover it was a photo of a performance piece as part of a series of pieces entitled, "Siluetas," in which Mendieta sought to photograph her silhouettes as they appeared in the earth, depicting a very ephemeral presence through the appearance of these silhouettes. Her silhouette marked her absence and for me, was a very profound message that immensely captivated me. Ana Mendieta is a performance artist, painter, sculptor, photographer and video artist whose work is renowned for its eerie and mystical qualities that often touched upon the idea of displacement. Much of Mendieta's work is built upon her own personal disconnect from the ideas and concepts of mother, identity, and sense of belonging as Mendieta herself was taken away from her homeland of Cuba to be raised in the United States. This began the internal conflicts that would be of great inspiration for her art work in her later life. Personally, I really enjoy Mendieta's work because of the feminine mysticism that surrounds it. She utilizes the female body that strips it of its subjectivity, as if she is reclaiming it for her own. Every one of her pieces are very thoughtful and are engaging in various topics that resonated with me from the very first moment I laid eyes upon her work last fall.

By: Amber Torres