Ana Mendieta

video still "Body Tracks"

1982

Ana Mendieta was a cuban-born performance artist, sculptor, video artist and painter who immigrated to the US when she was only 12 in order to escape Castro's regime.  Mendieta struggled with issues of place and belonging and her work delt with these issues as well as themes of feminism, gender, violence, life and death. 

Mendieta lived to be only 37.  In September of 1985, Mendieta died from a fall from her 34th floor Greenwich Village apartment in New York, after an argument with her husband of only eight months, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre.  Andre was tried and acquitted of second-degree murder, although close friends of Mendieta, like the American visual artist Carolee Schneeman, argued Mendieta's death was not suicide.

Two of Mendieta's most iconinc series are her Silueta Series and her Body Tracks Series. 

In the Silueta Series, Mendieta placed her nude body into a natural scene, painted her body to mimic the natural scene and placed herself there, left an ephemeral silhouette of her body in the earth, or sculpted/drew the image of a female form into nature, which would wear away with time.

 Untitled (Grass on Woman)

1972

 Tree of Life Series

1973-1980

Untitled drawing in sand

1970s

Silueta Series in Mexico

1973-1978

One of her most powerful pieces is from her early performance career while she was attending the University of Iowa.  There was a woman who was raped and murdered on the Iowa campus and Mendieta responded with protest to the way the school's administration chose to handle the situation (hush, hush and hopefully it will go away) by staging an image of what the scene might look like.

Unititled (Rape Scene)

1973

Friends and fellow students were invited to her apartment. Upon arriving they found Mendieta stretched across a table and tied up, half nude and covered in blood.  In this way Mendieta was attempting to "name" rape, to create an image of it and to avoid allowing rape to be overlooked.

The use of blood in Mendieta's work is very important and linked to her childhood development in Cuba, where she was raised under the religion of Santeria, which commonly employs rituals of animal sacrifice, exposing Mendieta to the power of blood from an early age.

Unititled

Body Tracks Series

1974

stretched out and tied up - her almost-nude body smeared in blo

I was at the Art Institute of Chicago last night and currently on display are a nice collection of photographs and drawings from the Silueta Series, as well as one Silueta Series video and one Body Tracks video until January 15th, 2012.  Diane and Bruce Hall currently own these works and will be handing the work off to the Art Institute in the future, making this the largest collection of Mendieta's work to be owned by any one museum.  THANK YOU!  Very exciting that Mendieta's work will be so close.  I look forward to going back and seeing it again and again.

Nick Cave: Meet me at the Center of the Earth

It has been about 14 years since Chicago artist Nick Cave created his first sound suit.  In March 2011, the Seattle Art Museum hosted a large collection of Nick Cave's work including some of his most well known as well as his newest soundsuits , called Meet me at the Center of the Earth. The show presented room after room of the oddly formed suits accompanied by videos of the soundsuits in action and objects Cave made during production of the suits to practice his techniques.  Lucky for us, a lusciously illustrated catalog was printed that documents Cave's development from objects to soundsuits, includes historical and contemporary references, essays and an interview with Cave fill the pages of this 240 page must-have catalog.

What is a sound suit?  My definition of Nick Cave's soundsuits is that they are wearable collections of found objects or natural materials that are intentionally and meticulously combined, appliqued, embroidered, sewn and fabricated together to create bulbous, textured skins that can be worn and performed.  Some of the suits create sound when the objects attached to the suit hit each other when Cave dances, or jumps while wearing the suit.  The suits became "soundsuits" in 1998, when Cave made a suit of sticks and enjoyed the sound it made when he put the suit on and performed it.

 SOUNDSUIT 1998

twigs, wire, metal armature

 SOUNDSUIT 2006

appliqued construction with found knitted, woven, and crocheted fabric

SOUNDSUIT 2009

human hair, metal armature

SOUNDSUIT 2006

patchwork knitted and crocheted found fabric, drier lint, socks, driftwood, metal armature

SOUNDSUIT 2009

found abacus, fabric with appliqued buttons, metal armature

SOUNDSUIT 2009

plastic sandwich bags, Barbie dolls covered and stitched in found knit fabric, metal armature

I really enjoy the variety of materials that Cave employs in his work.  Nothing is off limits!  From crocheted bags, doilies, sweaters and sequins to pieces of wood, plastic buttons, toys and bags to covering Barbie dolls with fabric (above).  I believe Cave's choice to "mine" objects that exist in culture to talk about our existence in culture and ability to shift culture is incredibly relevant and totally cool.

Aside from the solid collection of amazing photographs archiving Cave's development, I also really enjoyed reading the essays included to preface the work.  My favorite essay was by Dan Cameron. 

Cameron notes Cave's need to create an autonomous object, and appreciates the life these objects create when they are performed.  Cameron also acknowledges the difficulties of "reconciling time-based art - i.e. performance - with the static object." Cameron then positions Cave in art and social history as a contemporary of Joseph Beuys, whose performance and video work created a path to attempt to deal with time-based art and the residual object and Leigh Bowery, whose shape-shifting costumes and gender bending performances are considered to be some of the greatest influences of the 1980s and 1990s London and New York Fashion circles, including singer-songwriter Boy George and British fashion designer, Alexander McQueen.

Joseph Beuys

"How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare"

Performance still

1965

Leigh Bowery

In addition to Cameron's placement of Cave's work in Art and Fashion History, he notes the ornamentation and performance of Cave's work as drawing similarities to the American Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans.

Ervin "Honey" Barrister, Creole Wild West

shows off his Mardi Gras Indian costume during the West Bank Super Sunday Parade

1997

"Creole Wild West: Mardi Gras Indians"

Louisiana Humanities

2008

I was so excited to be introduced to the Mardi Gras Indians because I feel like it is very easy to expect a connection between Cave's work and African tribal dance, because there is certainly a connection there (in fact, the exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum was run in conjunction with an exhibition of African tribal artifacts and video documentation of African tribal dances), however I appreciated the Mardi Gras Indian connection since it is an African-AMERICAN tradition and Cave is an American, after all.