Ana Mendieta, Tate Modern

I have always longed to see the work of 20th century Cuban artist Ana Mendieta up close. Since coming across her work at University, I have felt a strange attachment to the weird and wonderful, simultaneously esoteric and profoundly human pieces she created. Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948, and largely lived and worked across the United States. Throughout her life, her Caribbean heritage played a huge role in her work and livelihood -  her earliest creations reflecting a profound interest in the African, European and Native mythology that shaped Cuban and larger Caribbean religious, social and cultural identities. The Exhibition ‘Ana Mendieta’, currently showing at Tate Modern, explores the work of the artist from its origins to her final pieces. The first room introduces visitors to the various figures and forms derived from traditional religious and spiritual iconography that Mendieta chose to visit in her art, these included a host of figures such as those from Yoruba mythologies.  Here, we are also introduced to what is arguably the most iconic, durable and recognisable figure in Mendieta‘s work - the grounded, natural female body. Many of these pieces are carvings into various landscapes like beaches, grasslands rocks - into which Mendieta has moulded this abstracted female image. This sense of inextricability and familiarity between the female form and the land is critical in Mendieta‘s work. Throughout her working life as an artist, she would repeatedly return to these sculptures and carving bodies into various landscapes.

The female form played a huge role in Mendieta’s oeuvre - and it always this same iconographic, exaggerated and abstracted female form. One is led to believe that this image of woman chosen by Mendieta is a symbol of mother earth. She is both in and of the land, and thus all things. Her wide hips and prominent lower belly, her protruding breasts, vagina and womb (often marked out by natural dips in the landscape or physically dug out to create a hole by the artist herself), mark her as fecund, abundant and fertile - but she is in no way related to the domestic vision of fertility as was rife in patriarchal 20th century society. She is wild, belonging only to herself, to the land with which she is inextricably connected. She is like a goddess - an idealised vision of the divine female - and yet simultaneously a rejection of societally imposed vision of the ideal woman.

Not only did Mendieta choose to craft explorations of the body, but she also payed particular attention to the functions that distinguished women from men - from the womb and its capacity to giving birth, to menstruation, to the sexual organs. Whilst sometimes Mendieta’s work is viewed as overtly sexual, graphic or violent - I personally believe this is a reductive stance. Indeed, Mendieta’s women all look very similar - with emphasised features like prominent breasts, the protruding womb and the gaping vagina, however, she appears to observe and characterise them in relation to their functional properties as opposed to pure sexuality or indeed physicality. Rather, she seems to distinguish the body from its features, and viewed women as an extension of the Earth, of nature itself.

Accompanying text expands on Mendieta’s refusal to distinguish the female form from nature. Operating during the 1970s - a time of women’s liberation, sexual liberation and revolution, her work reflected her own anti-sexist, anti-racist beliefs. They appear to act as both a stance on female autonomy and bodily ownership, showing women as active agents and beings that belong to the land, to themselves, no one else. They are as free as nature, and - being women - due to their very anatomy and physiology, have a stronger, more visceral connections to mother nature. These works are not, however just explorations of gender, but also excavations of racial and class structures. These women are part of their land, inextricable from it, and this is made all the more poignant by Ana’s imbuing of various mythological and ancestral symbolism.

Later, Mendieta would begin to introduce her own body into her work and some of her most recognisable work is images of herself integrated into various landscapes. Using photography and videography, she would pose in various landscapes - often adorning herself with natural elements such as feathers, flowers, grass, mud, or even blood and fire. Her work shifted from portrayals of the divine feminine as captured in earlier pieces, towards explorations of the more vulnerable and humane female body existing within the patriarchal confines of 20th century society. Blood played a significant role and was often applied in reference to brutal gendered structures and violence against women. Whilst Mendieta still created sculptures and installations featuring her previously explored goddess figure, even these visions began to resemble less the feminine divine and more so corpses. She began to envisage them with narrow hips, and less obvious signifiers of fertility. The reasoning behind this could be Mendieta’s shifting experience of the world and her changing political and social beliefs. Especially in the 1970s, she reflected that women were becoming extricated from their divine natural calling. The death and violence in her work reflects the mutilation of women’s freedom and autonomy within contemporary society.

What I felt the exhibition lacked, was a more thorough interrogation of Mendieta’s personal life and how this came across in her work. Indeed, she tried many different art forms in her creative career - and yet the underlying themes apparent in her artistic style remained consistent: gender roles, femininity, spirituality and nature connection. Some of her works are, of course, more overtly political than others - especially those that respond to particular societal events. On the whole, though, not that much is said of her political or cultural leanings. I guess Tate wishes us to look to the consistency of her chosen themes in order to understand the artists motivations: her persistent explorations of the female body and its inextricable relationship to the cyclical rhythms of natural world, and to the landscape, spirituality and cultural identity.

Mendieta was, and always will remain, an enigma. Perhaps this is because her beliefs were never outwardly conventional and thus cannot be regularly classified. Rather, they were more pagan and spiritual in nature. Thus it might have seemed reductive on Tate’s behalf to try and label her as one thing or the other - for instance, her work is seen as feminist, and she operated within the time frame of women’s lib, but she is not really referred to as such within wall texts or labels. Her understanding of femininity being more personally rooted and grounded in ecology rather than politics or culture. Despite this, it is undeniable that her Cuban heritage - the myths, folklore, beliefs that she grew up with, greatly impacted how she viewed the world.

Overall, this is a truly brilliant show. Ana’s work is so iconically liberated and exciting, and part of what makes it so is this mystery around it and around the artist herself. Her work is both abstract and symbolic, and yet also it’s so deeply steeped in potential meanings. From her installations to her video work, one sees what they want and no two people will envisage the art in the same way. Her pieces are abundantly derived from cultural histories and it’s truly excellent to see Cuban African and Caribbean mythology explored so fully and radically at the Tate. It is also a refreshing view of the female body - it’s roles in its functions, and all the more it’s connection and inextricability from nature and the landscape. Ana spent her life figuring out her role on earth and her work reflects this desire to explore where we come from, what and who we are. Her visions of femininity and womankind are especially innovative and inspirational - she felt women are by nature connected to the cyclical rhythms of the moon, the sun, the seasons and the Earth in a way that’s even more poignant than men. It is clear that, in Ana’s mind - women are meant to run free, to be wild. There is no trace of the domestic within the women Ana rendered, rather they are a rejection of the imposed confines of the society in which Ana experienced, lived and worked. Yet whilst they are fundamentally free - they are still very much of the land - made from it and a part of it. Everything is connected.