Ana Mendieta

Untitled (Maroya), 1982

Lifetime black and white photograph
10 x 8 inches (25.4 x 20.3 cm)

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

This photograph relates to later works from Mendieta’s Silueta series that inscribe a generalized female form upon the landscape. It documents the performance of a work in which the artist ignited gun powder inside the cavity of the form she had carved into the earth. The photograph's subtitle, Maroya, refers to the Moon Spirit of the Taíno (an Amerindian culture indigenous to Cuba and the Greater Antilles), who was considered to be the link between Divine Woman and human women. Made during a visit to Cuba in the early 1980s, this photograph symbolizes Mendieta’s return to her homeland. 

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.