E-Book Overview
Ana Mendieta, a Cuban-born artist who lived in exile in the United States, was one of the most provocative and complex personalities of the 1970s’ artworld. In Where Is Ana Mendieta? art historian Jane Blocker provides an in-depth critical analysis of Mendieta’s diverse body of work. Although her untimely death in 1985 remains shrouded in controversy, her life and artistic legacy provide a unique vantage point from which to consider the history of performance art, installation, and earth works, as well as feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism.
Taken from banners carried in a 1992 protest outside the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the title phrase “Where is Ana Mendieta?” evokes not only the suspicious and tragic circumstances surrounding her death but also the conspicuous absence of women artists from high-profile exhibitions. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Judith Butler, Joseph Roach, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha, Blocker discusses the power of Mendieta’s earth-and-body art to alter, unsettle, and broaden the terms of identity itself. She shows how Mendieta used exile as a discursive position from which to disrupt dominant categories, analyzing as well Mendieta’s use of mythology and anthropology, the ephemeral nature of her media, and the debates over her ethnic, gender, and national identities.
As the first major critical examination of this enigmatic artist’s work, Where Is Ana Mendieta? will interest a broad audience, particularly those involved with the production, criticism, theory, and history of contemporary art.
E-Book Content
From Where Is Ana Mendieta? by Blocker, Jane. DOI: 10.1215/9780822398967 Duke University Press, 1999. All rights reserved. Downloaded 07 Apr 2016 00:08 at 128.114.34.22
Where Is Ana Mendieta?
Where Is
JANE BLOCKER
Ana Mendieta? Identity. Performativity. and Exile
Duke University Press
Durham and London
1999
© [999 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
00
Title page: Ana Mendieta, untitled, 1982-84, detail. Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Joanna by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
For Roger
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Where Is Ana Mendieta? 1 I
FIRE 29
2
EARTH 45
.3
EXILE 69
4
TRAVEL 91
5
BODY II3 Conclusion: Writing toward Disappearance 131 Notes 137 Bibliography 153 Index 161
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I.
Women's Action Coalition Protest, 1992. Photo by Lisa
Kahane. xvi Plate 2. Ana Mendieta, Glass on Body. 1972. 12 Plate 3. Bruce Nauman, Pulling Mouth, 1969. 13 Plate 4. Ana Mendieta, Facial Hair Transplant, 1972. 14 Plate
s. Eleanor Antin, The King, 1973.
IS
Plate 6. Ana Mendieta, Rape Piece, 1972. 16 Plate 7. Ana Mendieta, untitled, ca. 1978. 28 Plate 8. Ana Mendieta, First Silueta, 1973. 38 Plate 9. Mary Beth Edelson, Woman Rising/Spirit, 1974· 59 Plate 10. Ana Mendieta, untitled (Tree of Life series), 1977. 60 Plate II. Ana Mendieta, untitled performance, 1972. 64 Plate 12. Ana Mendieta, untitled (Silueta series), 1977- 67 Plate 13. Ana Mendieta, untitled (Fetish series), 1977- 70 Plate 14. Ana Mendieta, untitled (Silueta series), 1976. 79 Plate IS. Ana Mendieta, Isla (Silueta series), 1981. 81 Plate 16. Ana Mendieta, Silueta de Laberinta, 1974· 98 Plate 17. Ana Mendieta, Itiba Cahubaba (Old Mother Blood), 1981. 100 Plate 18. Ana Mendieta, Anima, 1976. 104 Plate 19. Ana Mendieta, untitled, 1983. 107 Plate 20. Ana Mendieta, untitled (Silueta series), 1976.
IIO