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M+, Hong Kong, © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
On View
Mediatheque
Ana Mendieta 安娜．曼迪耶塔
Untitled 無題
1981
For the two-minute duration of this untitled black-and-white film by Ana Mendieta, the camera continuously pans between two adjacent scenes: the vague outline of a human body in the sand on a beach and the lapping waves of the ocean. However, the two never meet. It seems that the silhouetted body is safely distanced from the encroaching water; yet, the shoreline striations and debris, as well as the suppleness of the sand that enabled Mendieta to make the form, indicate that filming is taking place during low tide. Inevitably the tide will rise and wash the figure away. The work features motifs that run throughout Mendieta’s practice, particularly the depiction of a fragile trace of a female body that is otherwise missing.
Made in Cuba in 1981, the work marks the artist’s return to the country of her birth after more than thirty years away. This is also among the final works in the artist’s ‘Silueta’ series. Completed between 1973 and 1981 in Iowa, Cuba, and Mexico, each silent video piece was shot with either an 8-mm and 16-mm camera, lasting only as long as one reel of film or shorter. Combining conceptual approaches that would come to define body, performance, and land art of the era, Mendieta’s Silueta works document the presence of female forms in various landscapes, which she either molded or created by impressing her body into materials including mud, sand, grass, snow, gunpowder, ice, wood, cloth, and ashes.
Made in Cuba in 1981, the work marks the artist’s return to the country of her birth after more than thirty years away. This is also among the final works in the artist’s ‘Silueta’ series. Completed between 1973 and 1981 in Iowa, Cuba, and Mexico, each silent video piece was shot with either an 8-mm and 16-mm camera, lasting only as long as one reel of film or shorter. Combining conceptual approaches that would come to define body, performance, and land art of the era, Mendieta’s Silueta works document the presence of female forms in various landscapes, which she either molded or created by impressing her body into materials including mud, sand, grass, snow, gunpowder, ice, wood, cloth, and ashes.
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