I N C O R P O R A D O S : 
The Art of Ana Mendieta 

T H E A R T O F A N A M E N D I E T A , T H O U G H S T I L L L A R G E L Y U N R E C O G N I Z E D , H A S A N I M -

P O R T A N T P L A C E I N A R T H I S T O R Y . N O T O N L Y I S I T S I G N I F I C A N T T O T H E D E V E L O P M E N T 

O F N E W W A Y S O F C R E A T I N G A R T , B U T T H E I D E A S P R E S E N T E D C A L L I N T O Q U E S T I O N 

C O M M O N L Y A C C E P T E D A T T I T U D E S O F A M E R I C A N S O C I E T Y I N R A D I C A L W A Y S . I N H E R 

R E J E C T I O N O F T H E G A L L E R Y S P A C E A N D T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F P E R F O R M A N C E A R T 

I N T O S C U L P T U R E W O R K S , I N T O A R T A S A D I S A P P E A R I N G A C T , M E N D I E T A E X P L O R E S 

T H E S H A K Y B O U N D A R I E S O F W H A T A R T A C T U A L L Y I S A N D C O U L D B E . I N T H E S E 

E X P L O R A T I O N S , S H E D I S S E C T S T H E I D E A O F I D E N T I T Y A N D G I V E S A N E W D E F I N I T I O N 

O F I T O N H E R O W N T E R M S . T H I S E S S A Y E X P L O R E S M E N D I E T A ' S M O S T L Y I G N O R E D 

E A R L Y W O R K S I N C O N J U N C T I O N W I T H H E R M O R E W E L L K N O W N L A T E R P I E C E S I N 

O R D E R T O G I V E A M O R E F U L L E X A M I N A T I O N O F B O T H T H E I D E A S P R E S E N T A N D T H E 

I M P O R T A N C E T H E W O R K H A S B E Y O N D H E R O W N P E R S O N A L L I F E A N D T O T H E W H O L E 

O F S O C I E T Y . 



"Her work is based on the belief that there is no one true 
way to statically define identity and that true identity 

can only be found in the rejection of individuality." 

Ana Mendieta's work consists of revolutionary concepts. It 

revels i n calling into question traditionally accepted views 

of life and society as a whole. One of the most commonly 

recognized concepts of human life is the notion of per-

sonal, individual identity. I n general, most people assume 

that they are all individuals and find their identity aligned 

i n a fixed way with their own race, gender, heritage, creed, 

and political status. Due to her own complicated upbring-

ing, Mendieta was not will ing to accept the conventional 

notions of identity as a fixed concept. Her work is based on 

the belief that there is no one true way to statically define 

identity and that true identity can only be found i n the 

rejection of individuality. Her beliefs stem from a pro-

found understanding of the Afro-Cuban mystical religion 

of Santeria. Using the culture of Santeria and her own 

personal beliefs, Mendieta's artwork expresses the prob-

lematic connections between traditionally opposing forces 

and the complications of commonly understood concepts. 

She matured through her work by exploring innovative 

ways to create that, in their own definitions, challenge tra-

ditional views of art itself. Through the progression of 

her work, Mendieta formed a sophisticated way of ex-

ploring and uniting the boundaries between supposed op-

posites. She walked a tenuous line between meanings 

which served to enrich her work with a multitude of under-

lying implications. 

Although her artwork does not find its sole basis i n biogra-

phy, it is important to understand the upbringing of Ana 

Mendieta in order to appreciate how she came to her radi-

cal views later i n life. Mendieta was born to a privileged 

family in Cuba; however, as a teenager, Mendieta was sent 

to the United States as a part of the Catholic-based initia-

tive, Operation Pedro Pan, to escape the dictatorship of 

Fidel Castro. She was bounced from orphanage to foster 

home and back again in different Iowa neighborhoods, 

never really finding one true place to call home. During 

these formative years, Mendieta was treated as an "other." 

She had no family to remind her of her own heritage and 

strong background or to help her cope with being in this 

strange new place. She lived in neighborhoods where she 

was one of a very few Latins and has stated that she felt iso-

lated and ostracized by other children and adults. Because 

of this particular situation, Mendieta developed a different 

way of looking at herself and her own identity. She was up-

rooted from the homeland with which she would have tra-

ditionally associated her identity. Her sense of identity, and 

what it means to have one, was complicated by her own sit-

uation. Instead of remaining confused and searching her 

whole life to find one true identity, Mendieta used her art-

work as a means of complicating and reversing traditional 

views of identity as a fixed, immovable thing. Through her 

work she attempted to expose the complications that arise 

from fixing identity, in a gendered, political, or social sense. 

E A R L Y W O R K 

I n her earliest experiments with this concept, Mendieta at-

tempts to call into question the most basic forms of identi-

fication. In her series, Facial Cosmetic Variations from 

1972, Mendieta photographs the facial distortions that 

occur as she dons different colored wigs and paints her face 

with theatrical makeup to change her skin tone. The effects 

are so subtle that in each picture it appears to the viewer 

that he or she is looking at a completely different person al-

together. Through very little effort on her part, Mendieta 

plays with the most personal aspect of a human being's 

individuality, his or her own face. By showing that she 

can manipulate her face into something that is entirely 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 05 



foreign to how she actually looks, Mendieta exposes the 

problem with fixing one's own identity on facial features. 

She uses herself as a clean slate to question the notion of 

true individuality. 

I n her M.A. thesis project, Facial Hair Transplant from 

1972, Mendieta goes further in her investigation by explor-

ing and challenging the notion of gendered identity. Here 

she documents the transplant of the freshly-shaven beard 

of her male friend, Morty Sklar, to her own face. His hair 

color matches hers almost identically and the transition 

from female to male is almost effortless. She says of the 

piece in her thesis statement, "After looking at myself i n a 

mirror, the beard became real. It did not look like a dis-

guise. It became a part of myself and not at all unnatural to 

my appearance."1 By simply gluing hair onto her face, 

Mendieta straddles a line between the sexes and exposes 

the complexity of commonalities between the two. As lane 

Blocker explains, "By working with the conventions of the 

binary to represent identity but being unable herself to fit 

their regulatory practices, her work exposes their unten-

ability." 1 1 She suggests, as she did i n her Facial Cosmetic 

Variations, that she can inhabit the identity of a male even 

though she is only altering her surface appearance. She 

represents maleness with facial hair; however, i f a woman 

can just as easily take on that particular part of the male 

identity, how firmly rooted is that gendered identity? 

I n her Glass on Body series from 1972, Mendieta further 

challenges the notion of gender by using a glass sheet to 

distort the forms of her naked body, most successfully in 

the piece where she completely eliminates her nipples and 

distorts her breasts; she blurs the edges between male and 

female, creating an alternate human form. According to 

Gill Perry," She both takes control of the experience, direct-

ing the viewer's gaze towards the ways in which a woman's 

body might be abused or disfigured (as, for example, 

through rape) and alienates herself from it, creating a more 

emblematic image." 1 1 1 In part of the same series she presses 

her face against the glass, violently distorting her features, 

producing an almost grotesque and inhuman creature. 

Here she exploits the human form i n ways to disassociate it 

with any kind of gender identity. 

Mendieta's lack of roots from childhood caused her to re-

search where she came from during her more adult years. 

She found a strong connection with the religion of 

Santeria, which furthered her efforts to challenge tradi-

tional values and concepts present within society. The reli-

gion of Santeria does not connect with modern, American 

notions of identity, life, or death very well. Santeria practice 

and mythology places an importance on the connection of 

seemingly opposing forces. Mendieta's performances ex-

pose the falsehoods of traditional views on fixing identity to 

external characteristics. She attempts to apply a Santeria ex-

planation to modern day societal problems. 

I N F L U E N C E OF S A N T E R I A 

Through the influence of Santeria, Mendieta uses her tal-

ents and abilities to try and uncover what has been hidden 

from the waking world. Her early opposition to the "se-

crets" that are kept in modern society perhaps grew out of 

her anger and reaction to the rape and murder of a fellow 

student at Iowa University. This personal situation which 

confronted Mendieta caused her to react i n a surprisingly 

radical way. Her performance art pieces which she entitled 

Rape Scenes, present a startling and gruesome look at the 

reality that is covered up by our world. "These works, made 

as feminist statements of protest, graphically depicted the 

horror and brutality of this everyday occurrence which is so 

ineffectively addressed by the police and legal system." 1 V 

Mendieta would invite friends, professors, and students 

either to an "art happening" or simply over to her apart-

ment for the evening. Before they were scheduled to arrive, 

Mendieta would stage herself in such a way so to appear as 

i f she had been raped and murdered. Guests would arrive 

under the false pretence of a casual event or gathering of 

people, only to be confronted with the horrible and terrify-

ing reality of the rape of a woman. Instead of covering up 

these awful occurrences, Mendieta exposes them to the 

public in order to instigate an upheaval of their mental re-

liance on the media. She in turn also gives more meaning 

I N C O R PO R A D O S : T H E A R T O F A N A M E N D I E T A 



to the appalling events by giving them a real, raw quality for 

the public to see. 

Mendieta's art work is an attempt to break away from tradi-

tion, to form a new way of seeing the female form, liberated 

from male desire; her "use of the female body as a naked 

protagonist, not as subject, but as woman unclothed, un-

veiled, potent and sexual, is radical." v Ana's rape scenes 

show a gruesome defilement of the female body; however, 

they turn the focus from the victim to the participant. The 

entire event is staged in order to force the viewer to con-

front the physicality of their own presence somewhere that 

they have not expected to be. They are the only active partic-

ipants in the scene, as the subject has been "murdered." 

The acknowledgement of the viewing of the aftermath of a 

scene that only the perpetrator might see, implicates them 

in the crime. This personal experience of the piece serves to 

free the raped woman from the silence of the crime she 

suffers. The recognition of the event has an element of 

power in it. 

Mendieta's close ties to Santeria illustrate her more com-

plex understanding of these different levels of identities 

and meanings. In particular, she begins a direct dialogue 

with a more complicated notion of blood and the sacrifice. 

Ritual sacrifice is a central part of religious life to practition-

ers of Santeria. The sacrifice is not treated as a victim, but 

as a transcendent being giving its divine force to the one of-

fering it to the gods. "The rituals of Santeria are intended to 

reinforce and strengthen the Orisha (God) while bestowing 

Ashe on the believer. Ashe is power, divine power, the grace 

of God, the life force of God... Blood has Ashe. Blood also 

contains the potentiality of life and is a symbol of l i fe . " v i 

Her Rape Scenes expose this complicated nature of the sac-

rifice. Violence and sacrifice in the myths of Santeria and 

pre-colonial religions existed not as forms of punishment 

or horror, but as integral tenets of life. One story involving 

the origin of woman, which Ana wrote about for a book she 

planned on publishing, centers on a woodpecker, "taking 

the women who had no sex, they bound their hands and 

feet and tied the bird to their bodies. The woodpecker began 

to work where the sex of women is ordinarily located. " V 1 1 

This violent story about the carving out of woman's genitals 

by a bird's beak was intended to be accompanied with a 

quiet and unassuming drawing of a figure's silhouette on a 

leaf. The juxtaposition of the horrifyingly graphic with a 

kind of tenderness is something that Mendieta wi l l use 

later in her work. She may be even illustrating this myth in 

her performance piece Bound Woman of 1973 in which she 

rolls and writhes around naked on the floor with her arms 

and legs bound together. In this story, sacrifice is illustrated 

and played with almost as an initiation rite or rite of passage 

for women. 

Women and birds are often conflated within Mendieta's 

work. This is especially important due to the predominance 

of the chicken in Santeria sacrifices. In her piece entitled 

Feathers on a Woman of 1972, Mendieta glues white feath-

ers to the entire face and body of a nude woman so that only 

her hands and genitals are left exposed. In the photographs 

she takes of her subject, Mendieta poses the woman i n a 

proud and forceful way. Her female sexuality, the source of 

life, confronts the viewer in its essence, completely un-

apologetic. I n a piece executed in the same year, Death of a 

Chicken, Mendieta sacrifices a live white chicken by having 

its head cut off. She lets the chicken's blood flow out of its 

decapitated body, staining its own virginal white feathers, 

and holds it upside down while it fiercely struggles with its 

last dying impulses, splattering blood all over her body. The 

dying blood pouring out of the flailing chicken has a 

primal, spiritual energy that perhaps only a sacrificial 

entity in that last dying moment can contain. Here the 

images of blood and sacrifice are viewed as positive. 

In light of this perspective, Mendieta's rape scenes take on 

a new significance. As a sacrifice, the woman is the ulti-

mate victim of traditional notions of male desire; however, 

Mendieta wishes to distort this view in order to give the 

woman's death more profundity and significance. As Mary 

Jane Jacob suggests, "Mendieta began to invest the image 

of blood with an ancient meaning and its more positive 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 05 



interpretation in Santeria as the essence of l i f e . " v m By asso-

ciating the raped woman with a sacrificial being, she calls 

forth the complicated notion in Santeria of blood sacrifice 

as a source of power, divinity, and life. 

Santeria taught Mendieta that life and death, male and fe-

male, violence and nurture are all concepts that exist i n di-

rect connection with one another, not in opposition. 

Mendieta's art attempts to explore this instability i n a visual 

way. Mendieta often quoted Octavio Paz in her artist's state-

ments, saying, "Our cult of death is also a cult of life i n the 

same way that love is a hunger for life and a longing for 

death." l x In this sense, a scene of death or murder is at one 

time a place of intense violence, but with that death, a kind 

of power and life for the victim may be found. 

LATER W O R K 

The Silueta series, perhaps Mendieta's most well known 

work, shows the movement of her art toward a more primal 

state. She wishes to insert herself within the land, but she 

also is well aware of her own physical limitations and the 

fact that there is no real way to do this other than through 

death or burial. She solves this problem by tapping into a 

different way of seeing herself; she "evokes the body (and 

its death) through memory and association, rather than 

through more obvious signs of violence and mutilation." 5 4 

Instead of using her body physically, she uses her shadow 

image, or silhouette, to make marks into the terrain i n var-

ious ways. By doing so, she relinquishes her own personal 

identity as it is known in the bodily sense and offers the 

earth the imprint of herself. She leaves her own mark on 

the earth and relishes in its ability to absorb it back into it-

self. In this way she is also furthering the ideals of perform-

ance art i n the fact that these supposed sculptures are in-

tended to disappear. They are inherently impermanent, 

intended as momentary glimpses of the human form 

which wi l l sooner or later, depending on the process in-

volved, be consumed by the power of nature. In many 

pieces, she carves and sculpts her outline into the earth and 

mud, allowing it to be eaten away and reappropriated by 

the landscape over time. In another piece, she allows the 

ocean's tides to take away her silhouette that has been filled 

in with red flowers and berries. These pieces exist as a trace 

of abstract sculpture and self portrait, male and female, 

earth and body, at once solid and present and at the same 

time decomposing and absent. 

Due to many factors Mendieta's work is often marginalized 

by critics. Due to the time period and her presence i n the 

circumscribed feminist sector of art, she is often written off 

as a goddess worshipping artist. Her use of the earth as a 

mode for creation juxtaposed with her feminist leanings 

also traps her i n the category pertaining only to feminist is-

sues. In the same instance, her complicated background 

and use of her own body forces her into the categorization 

of a narcissistic self-worshipper. It is thoroughly impossi-

ble to suggest that any one of these criticisms is wholly right 

or wrong. One is able to assert, however, that there is an el-

ement of truth to each one, but that no one meaning or ex-

planation can be attributed to her work. Her critics may 

have all been partially right in their categorizations, how-

ever in fitting slightly into all of these categories, she thus 

resists specific classification. In her choice of performance 

art as a medium, Mendieta's work functions both with and 

without an "author." While bits of her biography, personal 

beliefs, and politics filter i n through the works, their expla-

nation does not rest on them. 

While she does work within the confines of what is known 

as the feminized earth, it is Mendieta's interest in the com-

plicated notion of the purity of nature and the land that 

causes her to work in this field. Land and the earth have 

been associated with the female body for centuries, and for 

centuries, just like the land, the female body has come to be 

known through a culturally constructed sense. Keeping 

with her theme of the more complicated notion of identity, 

Mendieta suggests that just as gender is a culturally con-

structed, and thus a false marker of identity, so are the cul-

turally constructed territories of the land. She executes her 

pieces in different parts of the world with the same style. 

They function as a whole unit and are not noted to have any 

particularities in them other than what nature had in-

I N CO R P O R A D O S : T H E A R T O F A N A M E N D I E T A 



tended (i.e. in different climates or natural zones, such as 

forest or ocean). The natural and thus more pure and true 

delineations of identity that exist in the land are more im-

portant to Mendieta than the superficial ones suggested by 

cultural confines. 

Critics also often come to the conclusion that Mendieta's 

Silueta series represents the culmination of an ongoing 

search for a personal identity. Mendieta has previously out-

lined i n her speech entitled "Art and Politics," her belief that 

art is intended for a high, noble purpose: 

exi le ." x m The emphasis on disappearance and remaining 

unmarked by time and place is at the forefront of these 

works. The power of the physical terrain to remain un-

changed by politics and societal conventions is where 

Mendieta finds solace and power. 

C O N C L U S I O N 

Mendieta furthered the Santeria belief that there is not one 

individual or national identity, in a spiritual sense, but there 

is only the concept of "the all." I n an artist's statement 

Mendieta explains: 

'Art's greatest value is its spiritual role and the influence 
that it exercises in society, because art is the result of a 

spiritual activity of man and its greatest contribution is 
to the intellectual and moral development of man." x i 

Critics tread upon the essentialist view that her work can be 

summed up as an autobiographical journey, landing ulti-

mately in moments in her works where she places herself 

within the earth, finding a constant source of fixed identity 

from which to define herself. More refined interpretations 

would suggest otherwise: "The persistent characterization 

of Mendieta's work as signifying her personal loss, a loss 

forced on a member of the so-called Third World by the 

West, works only to rehearse the script of dominance and 

submission on which both colonialism and imperialism are 

based. " x i r I n fact when looking at her work and writings at 

the time, all evidence points to Mendieta's reveling in the 

concept of loss and exile. She does not align herself with any 

one nation in her Siluetas, rather she inserts them into the 

ground of Iowa, New York, Mexico, Rome, and Cuba in the 

same way. Her longing was not one for a nation to identify 

with, but an all encompassing force to let go within. For 

Mendieta, the earth provided such an option because it "is 

not a place but a ubiquitous concept, one that makes na-

tional identification uncanny. That is, to identify herself 

with the 'earth' and not with Cuba or the United States 

means that Mendieta can sustain rather than assuage 

My art is grounded in the belief in one Universal Energy 

which runs through everything from insect to man, from 

man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy. 

My works are the irrigation veins of the Universal fluid. 

Through them ascend the ancestral sap, the original 

beliefs, the primordial accumulations, the unconscious 

thoughts that animate the world. There is no original past 

to redeem; there is the void, the orphanhood, the 

unapprised earth of the beginning, the time that from 

within the earth looks upon us. There is above all the 

search for origin.xlv 

Mendieta formed her concept of identity as orphanhood 

and a loss of origin. Identity then becomes, logically, a form 

of exile and isolation. Jane Blocker explains that in accept-

ing this paradox there is actually "no essence, only the 

search for essence; there is no identity, only the name; there 

is no origin, only the cinder"5™ Mendieta's work asserts that 

there is no real origin or true meaning, only the search for 

this origin and the interplay between different meanings. 

In her use of her deconstructed body she has not found the 

origin, but has begun to create a search for that origin. 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 05 



By creating her Siluetas, Mendieta attempts to create a col-

lective identity for both herself and perhaps even the whole 

of human kind. She inserts her earth sculptures into the 

land untouched by markers of time or place. In doing so, 

she suggests that history and culture do not exist in a linear 

sense, but can be understood as more of a collective under-

standing amongst peoples. As Mendieta herself asserts, " I t 

is because culture is a historic phenomenon that we must 

refer to it not just in past and present tense but i n the dialec-

tical effect one has on the other, as well as dialectically with 

other cultures... Civilization emerges as the gathering and 

use of past experiences, more or less done i n an intuitive 

way."™ In the human being's quest for the origin and thus 

identity, which wi l l inevitably turn up without an answer, he 

submits himself to the power of communion with others. 

In that submission to the community of the all, the collec-

tive search for origin becomes the origin in a sense. 

Mendieta's "imagined community crosses all territories, 

escapes all border guards, can be found anywhere on the 

planet, [and] is tied neither to language nor to race."xvii The 

messages and memories collectively conveyed throughout 

the past and into the present to formulate a kind of shared 

and universal identity are what Mendieta attempts to ele-

vate, give power to, and spread throughout the world. I f the 

viewer accepts Mendieta's deconstruction of the commonly 

accepted notions of gender, identity, and basic human expe-

riences, such as life and death, he or she can better enter 

into Mendieta's rather different and innovative world. In 

this world, the person occupies no place, no time and is, in 

effect, no one. However, in this loss of national, gendered, 

and individual associations, transcendence from the false-

hoods and masks of modern day society can be attained. I f 

one can separate oneself from these everyday associations, 

then maybe life can be lived better and more fully. 

Mendieta's work was tragically never allowed to develop 

past September 8th of 1985. Her fatal fall from a 34th story 

window marked the end of her life and career. Her works, 

however, still live on as reminders of both a particular time 

in history and also a universal fluid that runs through all 

time and cultures. 

E N D N O T E S 

i Mendieta, (164) 
i i Blocker and Mendieta, (49) 
i i i Perry (173) 
iv Jacob (193) 
v Sabbatino (150) 
v i Jacob (192) 
v i i Mendieta (185) 
v i i i Jacob (193) 

ix Merewether (101) 
x Perry (173) 
xi Mendieta (167) 
x i i Blocker and Mendieta (82) 
x i i i Blocker and Mendieta (78) 
xiv Blocker and Mendieta (34) 
xv Blocker and Mendieta (34) 
xvi Mendieta (171) 

REFERENCES 
Blocker, Jane, and Ana Mendieta. Where is Ana Mendieta? 
Identity, Performativity, and Exile. Durham NC: 
Duke University Press, 1999. 

Jacob, Mary Jane. "Ashe i n the Art o f Ana Mendieta." i n 
Santeria Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art, ed. 
Arturo Lindsay. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 
1996. 

Mendieta, Ana. "Art and Politics." i n Ana Mendieta, ed. Gloria 
Moure. Centra Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Barcelona: 
Ediciones Poligrafa, 1996. 

Mendieta, Ana. "Cultural Warfare: the Struggle for Life." 
i n Ana Mendieta, ed. Gloria Moure. Centra Galego de Arte 
Contemporanea, Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 1996. 

Mendieta, Ana. "Personal Writings." i n Ana Mendieta, ed. 
Gloria Moure. Centra Galego de Arte Contemporanea, 
Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 1996. 

Merewether, Charles. "From Inscription to Dissolution: A n 
Essay on Expenditure i n the Work of Ana Mendieta." i n Ana 
Mendieta, ed. Gloria Moure. Centra Galego de Arte 
Contemporanea, Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 1996. 

Perry, Gill . "The Expanding Field: Ana Mendieta's Silueta 
Series," i n Frameworks for Modern Art, ed. Jason Gaiger. New 
Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. 

Sabbatino, Mary. "Ana Mendieta: Identity and the Silueta 
Series." i n Ana Mendieta Poligrafia, 1996 

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