In Árbol de la Vida (1976) Ana Mendieta covered herself in mud and foliage and pressed her body against a tree, blending into it as if becoming part of it. It is simultaneously body art, sculpture and performance. I am stunned by the absolute physicality of her work, the bodily engagement with the land itself: the viscosity of mud, the hardness of tree bark, the foliage on the bottoms of her feet.
Truthfully, I am more comfortable with the artist’s work that shows evidence of her presence having been there, rather than being there. I think this is tied to her untimely death — the fact that she should still be here, but isn’t, having died in 1985 at the age of 36. Árbol also reminds me that she was here in Iowa for almost two decades.
In 1961, Mendieta and her older sister landed in Dubuque as part of Operation Peter Pan, a Catholic Charities and U.S. government initiative that brought thousands of Cuban children to the country based on an unfounded fear that Fidel Castro’s government would separate children from their parents and place them in communist indoctrination centers. She and her sister lived in foster homes around the state for five years until her mother and brother emigrated in 1966, her father in 1979.
She spent approximately a decade at the University of Iowa, earning a BA in art (1969), an MA in painting (1972), and an MFA in intermedia (1977). She flourished in conjunction with the intermedia program, founded in 1968, which she worked around and in for eight years. Mendieta exhibited and performed work on campus every year between 1971 and 1977. She was already performing and showing in New York and abroad before she left, creating some of her most well-known works, including the Silueta series, while still based in Iowa.
Since 2022, the artist’s connection to UI is more apparent, with a named gallery in the Visual Arts Building and works on view at the Stanley Museum of Art. The museum owns five works, some purchased in preparation for opening and two donated by the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection.
“We are deeply grateful for these gifts and for the family’s partnership on future Mendieta projects,” Stanley Museum Director Lauren Lessing said. “Mendieta is an incredibly important alumna of this university, and highlighting her work and career is a priority here.”
The use of her body, her deeply personal connections to and interactions with the earth — Mendieta’s works remain powerful and politically relevant in an age of climate change and continual attacks on bodily autonomy, despite the artist’s aching, unsettling absence.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s December 2024 issue. It has been updated to correct the donor of the Mendieta works to the Stanley Museum.
