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M+, Hong Kong, © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLCCourtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
On View
Mediatheque
Ana Mendieta 安娜．曼迪耶塔
Silueta del Laberinto (Laberinth Blood Imprint) 迷宮的輪廓
1974
In Silueta del Laberinto (Laberinth [sic] Blood Imprint), Ana Mendieta leads the viewer through the corridor and into the interior of an archaeological ruin in Yágul, Mexico (home to some of the most studied Pre-Columbian sites, in the Valley of Oaxaca). The wavering footage, shot on a handheld Super 8 camera, hovers around the bloody silhouette of a vaguely human form, impressed in the overgrown ‘floor’ of the ancient elite housing complex. For the remainder of the piece, the camera circles the form, so that the figure can be seen in the round, as much as in its context.
The work is indicative of motifs that run throughout Mendieta’s practice, particularly the use of blood-like substances—referencing rituals, violence, corporeality, and loss—and the presence of missing bodies (especially female ones). Completed between 1973 and 1980 in Iowa, Cuba, and Mexico, each silent video piece was shot with either an 8-mm or 16-mm camera, lasting only as long as one reel of film, or shorter. Combining conceptual ideas that would come to define body, performance, and land art of the era, Mendieta’s Silueta series documents the presence of female forms in various landscapes, which she either moulded or created by pressing her body into materials including mud, sand, grass, snow, gunpowder, ice, wood, cloth, and ashes.
The work is indicative of motifs that run throughout Mendieta’s practice, particularly the use of blood-like substances—referencing rituals, violence, corporeality, and loss—and the presence of missing bodies (especially female ones). Completed between 1973 and 1980 in Iowa, Cuba, and Mexico, each silent video piece was shot with either an 8-mm or 16-mm camera, lasting only as long as one reel of film, or shorter. Combining conceptual ideas that would come to define body, performance, and land art of the era, Mendieta’s Silueta series documents the presence of female forms in various landscapes, which she either moulded or created by pressing her body into materials including mud, sand, grass, snow, gunpowder, ice, wood, cloth, and ashes.
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