
TRACING ANA MENDIETA
Pain of Cuba
body I am
my orphanhood I live
In Cuba when you die
the earth that covers us speaks
But here
covered by the earth whose prisoner I am
I feel death palpitating underneath
the earth.
And, so
as my whole body is filled with want of Cuba
I go on to make my work upon the earth,
to go on is victory.
—Ana Mendieta, June 1981
“WHEN I MAKE MY ART, it is talking to the earth.”1 Ana Mendieta’s art, even when she was alive, was the stuff of myth. She worked alone, outdoors, in secluded, unexpected places, returning often to the same sites in Mexico and Iowa for the “Silueta” (Silhouette) series of