Ana Mendieta

 

I have heard of her, although I did not know that much about her.. A friend of mine told me this story where their ex girlfriend did this “crazy” performance where she slit a chickens throat in front of her class, and let it bleed. Later I found out it was a reenactment of Ana Mendieta, a Cuban performance/ video artist and photographer.

 

Recently, another friend advised me to look into the work of Tania Brugugera, another Cuban performance artist, she is very well recognized for a performance piece where she dons the cut body of a lamb, and eats Cuban dirt and salt for three hours to symbolize the colonization of Cubans from the Spaniards. Ana Mendieta ‘s name kept popping up in my research, so I began to look…

Her work, evocative, provocative, aggressive, and violent- it is due much in part to her own struggle from being displaced as a child, seeking asylum in the United States only to experience brutal racism and sexism,  Ana Mendieta was one of the leading artists at the forefront of the Women’s Rights Movement. She later died, from a fall from her apartment of the 34th floor in Greenwich Village. She was  pushed out the window from her minimalist sculptor husband Carl Andre, who was arrested, and later released with no charges.