Ana Mendieta

Silueta Sangrienta, 1975

Super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media
Running time: 1:51 minutes

Nasher Sculpture Center, Acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Fund for Women Artists

Mendieta’s series of actions documented through photography and film titled Silueta, or silhouette, have been described as the core of her practice. These works were commonly achieved by Mendieta inserting her body into the landscape or constructing a surrogate form of herself directly on the land. In early Silueta works, Mendieta appears and uses her body to create the form or imprint on the landscape; as the series progressed, her body was increasingly absent from the imagery, although its outline or imprint remained.

Mendieta’s 1975 film Silueta Sangrienta (which translates to “bloody silhouette”) represents a transitional moment in her Silueta series. Made in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1975, the short silent film documents a variety of the artist’s actions and both the presence and absence of her body. Silueta Sangrienta is considered by some scholars to be part of a suite of four films classified as “actions” within the Silueta series, as they go beyond simple documentation of Mendieta’s creation of a silhouette form, constituting instead a time-based work presenting a series of actions carried out by the artist. 

Exhibition:

November 8, 2016 - February 12, 2017

In a career that spanned just over a decade, Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) produced a remarkable body of work that included ephemeral outdoor performances and creations documented in photographs, 35mm slides and Super-8 films, as well as sculpture and drawing, before her untimely death at the age of 36. Rooted in nature and the body, Mendieta’s art fused both, and her legacy paved the way for artists of subsequent generations to create works involving identity politics, feminism, and performance.