Blood Writing

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

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

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

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