Ana Mendieta

Untitled, 1985

Wood and gunpowder
80 x 11 x 2 inches (204.5 x 28.6 x 3.8 cm)

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

In the final two years of her life, Mendieta progressed from documenting fleeting actions and interventions in the landscape to making discrete objects. These retained many of the key attributes of her earlier art, notably the fusion of earth and body, and the representation of the female form that dominated her visual vocabulary throughout her career. Untitled is one of a group of six wooden slab sculptures the artist made while living in Rome in the final year of her life. Mendieta burned a female form onto the surface of a tree trunk with gun powder. The result is a powerful totemic sculpture that subtly references many of the key aspects of her previous work: performance, the female form, gun powder, and the connection to nature. 

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.