Ana Mendieta

The curvature of the museum echoes the contours of the art displayed: Ana Mendieta‘s work circles back on itself. Her graphite drawings and earthen objects convey a sense of stasis, as do the acts and states portrayed by her body, at least those that have survived in photographs and on film. Her performances consisted of enwombed motion and stillborn postures. This was the antithesis of choreography as the mind behind the art-making seemed to seek the moment of rest.

Washington DC‘s Hirshhorn Museum has organized a huge retrospective on Mendieta that will also have been to Des Moines and Miami by the time it closes on January 15, 2006. It consists of 151 items. The accompanying catalog, in book form, is weighty and sells for $45. What is it that makes Mendieta a major artist – the work itself, its texture and text? The context of her public world and private life? Its transcendental attributes? Mendieta was active between 1972, when she studied with Hans Breder at the University of Iowa, and 1985, when she fell from a window in her colleague husband Carl Andre‘s 34th floor apartment in New York. Cuban born, she fled to the US at age 12 and was taken into foster care. As an adult, ...