Ana Mendieta

Untitled, 1981 / 2019

Color photograph

For her iconic Siluetas series, Mendieta placed her body in the landscape, using materials such as crushed flowers, sculpted mud, to literally inscribe her silhouette. Returning to Cuba in 1980 for the first time since her exile in 1961, she continued to trace female forms on the ground, as in these pieces executed on the beach in Guanabo. Mendieta’s works in Guanabo remain largely untitled yet they draw from indigenous Cuban culture and pre-Columbian myths to (re)inscribe archetypal female forms within the landscape.