Life and History in Ana Mendieta’s “Imagen de Yagul”

Introduction

The second half of the 20^th century was a period that enriched visual arts substantially by introducing a wide range of new genres, from land art and body art to performance art. Among those who experimented with these new genres and media was Ana Mendieta – a Cuban-born American painter, sculptor, performance artist, and filmmaker. While Mendieta was “one of the most prolific”¹ Cuban-American artists of her time, the most prominent part of her considerable legacy is the Silueta Series spanning from 1973 to 1980. She started this series with a piece called Imagen de Yagul, which is rather characteristic of her style. Mendieta brought together land art and body art and used her body as a medium, presenting female physiology as a metaphor for natural and historical cycles and inspiring other artists.

Main body

When speaking of the context of Imagen de Yagul, one should be acutely aware of Mendieta’s personal beliefs and biography alike. The relationship between humanity and nature was fundamental for Mendieta and set the themes for much of her work. She viewed earth – fertile, bountiful, and directly linked to the natural cycle of birth and decay – as an epitome of nature and the root of all life. As the artist said herself, “For the images to have magic qualities… I had to go to the source of life, to mother Earth.”² As for Mendieta’s biography, it is essential to understand that her own life was a cycle of displacement and uprooting. She was born in Havana, Cuba, but her parents sent her to the USA in 1961, soon after the victory of the Cuban revolution.³ In the United States, Mendieta was an immigrant and Latina, both qualities marking her as a displaced person rather than an autochthon. This deeply felt connection to earth combined with the sense of displacement and uprooting is central to Mendieta’s art, including Imagen de Yagul.

In terms of genre, Imagen de Yagul lies on the border between land art and body art, uniting features of both to create a coherent artistic message. While Mendieta was one of the many artists experimenting with new genres in the 1970s, her approach to them set her apart from many of her contemporaries. Body art of the 1970s often focused on feminist identity politics, but Mendieta, while sometimes alluding to feminist motives, preferred to focus on the connection between nature and humanity.⁴ Apart from that, Mendieta has also departed from the “formalist roots”⁵ of some land art of the 1970s. Instead, she offered a synthesis of both genres, where the human body – specifically a female one – and earth become one, symbolizing the endless cycle of birth, decay, and death, ultimately leading to the new birth.

The primary medium used in Imagen de Yagul is the artist’s own naked body. The choice is appropriate for the designed artistic meaning, as it brings forth and stresses the inevitable association between femininity and fertility deeply rooted in many if not all human cultures. Just as the fertile soil that provides plants with nutrients, allowing life to grow and blossom, the female body has the power to create new life. It is entirely plausible to assume, if for an artistic purpose only, that women as life-givers “have a closer connection to the Earth”⁶ than men. Female physiology is, perhaps, the most suitable emblem for the unceasing cycle of birth, life, death, and decomposition in nature. All this makes a naked feminine body an effective medium to convey an artistic message on the connection between humanity and earth.

The artist’s use of this medium is successful in stressing the message of returning to nature and finding one’s roots within it. Even though a dense layer of flowers covers Mendieta’s body from head to toes, its shape is still entirely recognizable and evidently feminine. The flowers actually emphasize rather than obscure this femininity: while the artist’s face is not seen at all, the contour of her broad hips is intentionally uncovered. Such use of the body suggests that it is treated not as belonging to a specific person, but as symbolic to a common female ability to create and sustain life. However, Mendieta’s use of her body in Imagen de Yagul also stresses the imagery of death: the artist lies on her back, hands on her sides as if being buried. Such an approach is characteristic for Mendieta’s determination “to go to the source of life”.⁷ A female body – a potential source of new life – is depicted as dead and decaying, but now it returns to earth and may begin a new cycle of life, if only as a fertilizer.

Mendieta’s decision to blur the borders between land art and body art also serves to enhance her artistic message. The landscape surrounding the artist’s body is as important for creating the intended meaning as the body itself. The artist lies in a pit, or, more specifically, a grave and, thus, returns to earth in the most literal sense. The flowers covering the body also acquire a more significant meaning in the context of the landscape. While there are green and even blooming plants around, the flowers on Mendieta’s body have been picked – separated from the earth that bore and fed them. On the one hand, they emulate the message inherent in the body itself: death and decay of some is not the end, but inevitably the source of new life. On the other hand, however, the flowers in the context of the landscape are a metaphor for Mendieta’s own experience: they are “ungrounded,”⁸ just as the artist herself, after being torn off her native Cuban soil. Hence, combining land art and body art as genres allows the artist to touch on themes of life and death and displacement simultaneously.

As for the context of the piece, it emphasizes Mendieta’s theme of the endless cycle of birth and decay, but this time in a historical rather than a purely biological sense. Her body lies not just anywhere, but in the ancient Zapotec tomb at the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican site of Yagul⁹. Knowledge of this context adds a new layer of meaning to the piece. Just as biological organisms, be that humans or flowers, decompose and serve as a fertilizer for a new cycle of life, civilizations eventually decay and pave the way for a new cycle of history. Use of a Zapotec tomb, of all places, underlines the motives of “instability and insecurity”¹⁰ inherent in the work concentrated on life and death. Human bodies – especially the female ones – are fragile in the face of many dangers of life, and cultures may be equally fragile, as Mesoamerican civilizations destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores. This inevitable demise, just as the inevitable rise of the new life or new historical entity, is an integrated part of the eternal cycles of rebirth interpreted in Imagen de Yagul.

Although Mendieta’s life ended when the artist was only 36, she still left a considerable impact on modern art, and, in particular, the environmental artists that came after her. One may agree with Conrad James that “the influence of Ana Mendieta on successive generations of artists is undeniable,”¹¹ and it is especially profound among those whose works carry an environmentalist message. For example, Lauren Craig, the creator of Thinking Flowers? project, quotes Mendieta’s artwork as one of her primary sources of inspiration leading her to a conviction that women “have a closer connection to the Earth”¹². In this sense, such works as Imagen de Yagul have inspired future artists to articulate their messages on the themes of nature, humanity, and their interrelation.

Admittedly, one should not assume that Mendieta’s environmentalism is the same as that of the 21^st century and its artists: they belong to different generations of environmentalism in visual art. Mendieta’s pieces stress the desire “to return to more ‘natural’ ways of life”¹³ borrowed from the idealized past. This desire is especially evident in Imagen de Yagul, where the context of the piece points directly to the image of the past. Environmentalist art of the 21^st century, however, is characterized by the drive for a sustainable future rather than the reconstruction of any earlier way of life¹⁴. Still, although different generations of artists adopt varying approaches, the fact of new artists acknowledging Mendieta as their predecessor and inspiration is indicative enough of her place in the context of contemporary environmentalist art.

Apart from that, Mendieta’s work had exerted an influence over the artists working in the discourse of displacement. One of the legacies of colonialism is displaced populations, with Africans brought to America via trans-Atlantic slave trade being the most obvious but far from the only example. As mentioned above, displacement played a considerable role in Mendieta’s biography and features in her artwork, including Imagen de Yagul. As a result, the Cuban-American artist offered a valid framework for those seeking to express their experiences as representatives of displaced populations via visual art. Lauren Craig – as a British black artist who feels displaced and, therefore, “uprooted”¹⁵ – pays homage to Ana Mendieta as one of her sources of inspiration. Thus, Mendieta’s works in general and Imagen de Yagul in particular have also influenced the artists interpreting the experiences of displaced populations.

Conclusion

As one can see, Mendieta’s Imagen de Yagul brings together context, genre, and medium to create a coherent and influential message on the cyclic nature of life and history. The artist’s choice of land art and body art as genres, combined with her own body as a medium and the context of her work, all serve to emphasize cycles of birth, death, and decay. Imagen de Yagul stresses the inevitability of decline, whether biological of historical, but also underlines that every end is also a new beginning. Mendieta’s work has its own place within the context of environmentalist art and also relates directly to the art that interprets the experience of displaced populations.

References

1. Craig, Lauren. “Thinking Flowers? as black eco-feminist activism,” Feminist Review, no. 108 (2014): 71-80.
2. Dziedzic, Erin. “Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-85.” Drainmag.com. Web.
3. James, Conrad. “Ana Mendieta: Art, Artist and Literary Afterlives.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 41, no. 3 (2017): 569-595.
4. Santone, Jessica. “Fidelity to the Earth Body: Violeta Luna’s 25^th Floor.” CSPA Quarterly, no. 15, (2016): 21-22.
5. Mendieta, Ana. Imagen de Yagul. 1973. Lifetime color photograph.

Footnotes

1. Conrad James, “Ana Mendieta: Art, Artist and Literary Afterlives,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 41, no. 3 (2017): 170.
2. Lauren Craig, “Thinking Flowers? as black eco-feminist activism,” Feminist Review, no. 108 (2014): 73.
3. James, “Ana Mendieta,” 570.
4. Jessica Santone, “Fidelity to the Earth Body: Violeta Luna’s 25^th Floor,” CSPA Quarterly, no. 15, (2016): 21.
5. Ibid.
6. Craig, “Thinking Flowers,” 73.
7. Craig, “Thinking Flowers,” 73.
8. Craig, “Thinking Flowers,” 73.
9. Erin Dziedzic, “Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-85,” Drainmag.com.
10. James, “Ana Mendieta,” 570.
11. James, “Ana Mendieta,” 571.
12. Craig, “Thinking Flowers,” 73.
13. Santone, “Fidelity to the Earth Body,” 22.
14. Ibid.
15. Craig, “Thinking Flowers,” 73.