In Silueta Series (1973 – 78) Ana Mendieta imprints her body and the female form as a ‘negative space’ within the natural environment, using natural material[ML1] found at the site and sometimes blood or gunpowder to form fire and smoke. These intimate and immersive encounters between Mendieta and her[ML2] environment exist temporarily and, like all phenomenal existence, disappear back into the folds of nature[ML3] . They can only be accessed via the institution in the form of documentation. Siluetas highlight that the institutional format of ‘exhibition’ and the ‘historical enclosure of art’ represent a fundamental displacement of animism[ML4] (Folie, p.182). The animistic vitality and immediacy of these earth-works can be felt to liberate the repressed ‘semiotic[ML5] ’ – the drives, rhythms and changing processes of soma – which is a state of nature. Mendieta is giving voice to a rich, vibrant, transformative principle that is silenced by society, to maintain symbolic stability and order (Grosz 1989, p.53). The apparatus of the Institution removes us from the liveness of this encounter with nature, which cannot exit within its walls, accentuating the essential rupture between civilised society and environment.
Mendieta described her work as being in the tradition of a ‘Neolithic artist’, which stood in complete opposition to the industrial spirit of her time. She is expanding the frame of time to include a much wider swathe of human history and in so doing is simultaneously questioning the very concepts that govern modern civilisation. The Silueta Series did not fit neatly into any contemporary art practice or tradition of her time or of the generations immediately prior to hers. They are performative through absence, presented to no audience[ML6] . Her sensitive, intimate, un-invasive traces stand at a contrast to the male land artists and sculptors of the previous generation[ML7] , who had a different approach – using large scale, distance and often an aggressive attitude towards the physical properties of the earth (Iles 2004, p.213). Her work is born from an animistic perspective which threatens Modernity’s rationale and raises new questions in social and environmental responsibility. She confronts us with a crisis of representation – the dark empty space of the female from, at once a site of burial and rebirth – forces a re-evaluation of the politics and production of subjectivity produced by the symbolic order (Grosz 1989, p.47).
REFERENCES
Folie, S, Franke, A (2012) Animism: Modernity Through the Looking Glass, Generali Foundation: Wien, Austria.
Grosz, E (1994), Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis.
Grosz, E (1989), Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists, Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd: St Leonards/Australia.
Iles, C (2004), Subtle Bodies: The Invisible Films of Ana Mendieta in Viso, O (2004), Ana Mendieta Earth Body, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: Washington DC.
you need to be clear as to the sources of the three images you included above;
a good choice of artist, and a strong response to the topic;
well done!
[ML1]I might ask you to define or at least expand on what you mean by ‘natural’ here ... you could use a footnote, or perhaps a sentence would be sufficient;
[ML2]it is ‘her’ environment for the duration of the activity / intervention??
[ML3]i understand your point – but “the folds of nature’ is a particular metaphor, and you might expand on it, or have it work in parallel with another way of saying the same thing ... e.g. “processes of erosion, decay, settling take place over time and Mendieta’s human intervention is no longer visible on the surface; they disappear back into the folds of nature”.
[ML4]again a footnote or a one-sentence definition would be useful;
[ML5]this is a very specific use of ‘semiotic’ here linked to the work of Julia Kristeva – you might need to refer your reader to this; yes you acknowledge Elizabeth Grosz, but the Kristeva context is important;
[ML6]except indirectly? via the documents?
[ML7]they were pretty much contemporary with her? also someone like Nancy Holt was making large scale land art works?
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