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Summary: Comprehensive study of the contemporary artist
Review: Ana Mendieta was only in her early 40s when she died in 1985. Born in Havana, Cuba, she came to the U. S. as a political refugee with her family when she was 12. Beginning in her artistic training at the U. of Iowa, she incorporated feminist and multicultural leanings into the conceptual art, land art, photography, and performance art she practiced with equal intensity and innovation. No matter what type of art she engaged in, Mendieta used her own body, or sometimes images or impressions of it, as a medium. With earth, blood, streams, shoreline, trees, and foliage, Mendieta meant to teach viewers about the close, intimate connection between a person's body and the natural world. With other art works, she makes statements about the savagery of rape and tyranny. No matter what point she means to convey or type of art she engages in, Mendieta's art is distinguished by its exceptional rawness. While the rawness is often inevitably provocative, it strikes one mostly as unaltered, immediate reality. The copious photographic record of Mendieta's art with essays by art experts who knew her or are familiar with her is a comprehensive appreciation of the short career of this artist who work both strikingly and complexly mixes artistic, political, and cultural elements of contemporary society.
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