Performance Encounters with Ana Mendieta
Opacity, siluetas and endings
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21687243 |
|---|---|
| Authors | K Antosik-Parsons (0000-0002-1609-6372, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 176-185 |
| Publication date | 2024-11-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Performance Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1352-8165 • E-ISSN: 1469-9990 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13528165.2024.2608486 |
| OpenAlex | W7154706097 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) was interested in nature, spiritualism, displacement, violence and death. Exiled from Cuba in 1961, Mendieta’s enigmatic performances explored rituals and nature, drawing upon Santería, an Afro-Cuban religion rooted in traditional West African and Roman Catholicism religions. In Silueta Series (1973–80), Mendieta traced her silhouette on the earth, capturing the dematerialized body in these compelling performances with film and photography. In Body Tracks (Rastros Corporales) (1982) Mendieta left bloody traces of her body on paper. Undeniably, Mendieta’s performances mark both existence and ending. This article considers the productive postcolonial/decolonial mobilization of the silueta in Ana Mendieta’s performance encounters extending beyond her death alongside Caribbean postcolonial theorist Édouard Glissant’s (1997) ethical and political claim of the right to opacity. It accounts for Mendieta’s cultural/national identity, her expulsion from Cuba and the complex impacts of colonization and exile, including tense Cuban–American political relations and ‘death in life’ in her work. Mendieta’s art was deeply inspiring to other artists including Cuban artist Tania Bruguera and British-Ghanian artist Adelaide Damoah. This article considers the opacity of the silueta and the striking materialization of Mendieta in Bruguera’s Homenaje a Ana Mendieta (Tribute to Ana Mendieta) (1985–96) and Damoah’s My Body is Present Homage to Ana Mendieta (2018)
Performance art · Poetry · Politics · Tribute · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Latin American and Latino Studies · Theatre and Performance Studies
United States-Cuban Relations
Embodied Avatars
Think Like an Archipelago
Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta and the Politics of the Venus Negra
Boundary/border
The Serial Spaces of Ana Mendieta
Poetics of relation
Vitalism's after-burn
The presence of absence
Santería Copresence and the Making of African Diaspora Bodies
Bloody Pleasures
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |