Ana Mendieta: Earth Body: Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985

by Olga Viso

This major monograph, a comprehensive reconsideration of the brief life and career of Ana Mendieta, contextualizes the artist's work within its time and acknowledges her legacy on subsequent generations of artists. The Cuban-born American sculptor is celebrated for her earth-body works of the 1970s, sculptural interventions in the landscape that placed her body--or its haunting silhouette--in symbiotic relationship with nature. Using extracts from her films, original slide documentation, photography, and other archival material, this catalogue illustrates early performances from Mendieta's student days, as well as her more well-known "Silueta Series" made in Iowa and Mexico from 1973 to 1980. Earth-body works executed in Canada, Cuba and the United States in the early 1980s, and select sculptures, drawings and installations dating to the mid-80s will also be illustrated. This publication promises to be the definitive study of the artist's work.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Visual Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 2, 2004

Reviews

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I was accosted by the Untitled (Hair Suds) images, I knew this was a trail I had to walk. As a museum catalog, the text is predictably stiff with museo-academic speak about the downfalls of previous stereotypes; the art itself is from someone ranging wild and risky. In what could be a multi-volume set (fifty? seventy?), this is a varied archive of the artist's collection of slides as she progressed in and around the earth: spectral "siluetas" in transformation, designs on leaves, earth-on-wood sculptures.

"The ephemeral" as an organizing principle is utterly compelling. There is an unforgettable anecdote about Mendieta's first body art, in which she planted a bean in one of her nostrils; "after a week or two the bean began to sprout, causing problems in her sinuses, so it had to be removed." You won't take a nature walk in the same way again (you do take those, right?)

[Aaron the Pink Donut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great reprodutions and insightful commentary on the work of Ana Mendieta.

[nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ana Mendieta is a amazing, therefore a book about Ana Mendieta is amazing... though more silueta pictures should be included, if you ask me. Like, images of every one she ever made. Ever.