Ana Mendieta

A self-portrait, Mirage exposes Mendieta's naked body in nature reflected in a mirror. She holds a gourd and stabs it open to let its seeds fly away.

United States 1975, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 6 min

United States / Mexico 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min

United States 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min

A 1975 work, Butterfly makes use of polarized graphic effects as Ana Mendieta's spectral body sprouts iridescent wings.

Ana Mendieta, 1975

This film shows the artist, covered in white bird feathers, running along the shoreline of La Ventosa beach in Oaxaca, Mexico.

In X-Ray, Ana Mendieta uses a Cinefluorography unit, a medical tool usually employed for diagnostic and research procedures. In Mendieta’s hands, she takes us inside her own head, filming her own X-Rayed skull while talking.

"Esculturas Rupestres" (Rupestrian Sculptures) was made in Jaruco Park outside of Havana. The low relief sculptures that resembled petroglyphs, were influenced by Ana Mendieta’s interest in the indigenous Taíno people of Cuba.

A film by Ana Mendieta

United States c.1974, Super 8 film transferred to digital, colour, silent, 3 min

This film is a performance that the artist undertook at Old Man’s Creek, Sharon Center, Iowa City, Iowa. The performance was recorded on Super-8 film and 35mm slides. The film shows Mendieta standing naked on the sandy bank on one side of the creek, in front of flowing water and a steep mud bank on the other side. After looking directly at the camera, she raises a flask to shoulder level and begins pouring blood down her chest, legs and stomach. She then reaches over her shoulders to include her back, and covers her arms before casting the empty vessel aside. Dropping to the ground, she plunges face-first into a heap of white feathers where she slowly rolls back and forth, adhering the feathers to the sticky blood on her skin. Finally, she rises slowly to stand with her arms held away from her body but bent at the elbow as though she is imagining being a bird with wings. She holds this position for a few seconds before the film ends.

Ana Mendieta, 1974

An elemental film of flesh, blood, earth and water, Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Sangrienta depicts the artist’s reposing body on the ground, its trick disappearance, and crimson blood filling its indent before Mendieta’s prone figure returns.

A single-channel video (transferred from Super-8 film), color, silent, where we watch the artist from behind as she traces a rough outline of her body in blood against a white wall.

A film by Ana Mendieta

A dead tree. A body. Ocean waves.

Short film by Ana Mendieta.

Single channel, super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent.

Volcán captures a raised mound of earth set against a grassy riverbank. A white silhouette in the shape of a female body lies atop of the form. The same shot then cuts to a frame where the base of the white figure spontaneously starts smoking. It then quickly sets aflame. As it combusts, a deep cavity is revealed, even as it is cloaked in growing flames and smoke, evoking a volcanic eruption. Finally, the entire body is engulfed so that only ashes remain in the negative space, human remains. Mendieta short the work in 1975 at Old Man’s Creek in Sharon Center, Iowa, near where the artist was living at the time.

Untitled is the first of over 100 films created by Ana Mendieta. By scratching and painting directly onto the film’s emulsion, she formed a filmic painting of fields of dancing colors, comprised of vibrant strokes of blue and splashes of red. Though Mendieta experimented with various technical processes, this is the only moving-image work in which she manipulated the film’s surface.

Captures students at Henry Sabin Elementary School in Iowa City holding a circular parachute and pulling down to catch the air's resistance.

A film by Ana Mendieta