EN
EXHIBITION
ANA MENDIETA EARTHBOUND 25.05–22.09.2019
EXHIBITION IN THE BRAEM PAVILION
ANA MENDIETA EARTHBOUND 25.05 – 22.09.2019 On 24 April 1976, Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) performed at the ICC (Internationaal Cultureel Centrum). Forty-three years later, Antwerp welcomes her art again with this solo exhibition featuring – for the first time in Belgium – a wider selection of her works. Earthbound opens up perspectives on how we relate as human beings to our surroundings. This intimate project makes clear that Mendieta’s works not only raise fundamental questions about normative social systems, but that they also represent a shift in perspective on recent sculpture traditions, from a vision determined by figurative sculpture, to one connected with land art and performance.
ART AS REFUGE
Fleeing from Cuba to the US and displaced from her family as a young adolescent, Mendieta experienced an ongoing state of unrest. Despite finding herself forced into the position of being ‘other’, she transformed this emotion into an active strategy and a liberating source, which she used to create her diverse, artistic oeuvre.1 “I am overwhelmed by the feeling of being cast out from the womb (Nature) … My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the Universe. It is a return to a maternal source.” Ana Mendieta, 19832 In Mendieta’s early works the search for maternal power and origin plays a central role and her frequent travels to Mexico aroused her artistic inspiration. She recognized similarities
between Mexican and Cuban culture in, for example, hybrid religious practices in which pre-colonial elements and Catholic rituals merged with one another. Her interest in ancient civilizations led her to Mexico, where the archeological sites introduced her to an ancient, primitive culture. Mendieta was fascinated by the animistic worldview and direct connection with nature. In 1973, on one of these sites – Yagul in the Valley of Oaxaca – Mendieta created her first Silueta (Silhouette). “I have been carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette).” Ana Mendieta, 19813
The artist laid naked on a Mixtec tomb and covered herself with white flowers, so that they seemed to grow out of her. In this work, Mendieta experienced an intense connection with the earth and the origins of civilization. From that moment on she created a large body of work, which she called the Silueta Series, using her own body or its imprint in conjunction with natural materials such as clay, branches and gunpowder. She generally described her pieces as ‘Earth-Body’ works, interventions in the landscape that placed her body in a symbiotic relationship with its direct environment.4
EARTHBOUND
During her own lifetime, in the 1970s and 80s, Mendieta was already concerned about the fragility of our ecosystem: in 1981 she talked about the destructive effects of technological society on nature in a lecture at Alfred State University, New York. In her work she strove to create a new kind of relationship with the nature that produced us.5 In his 2017 book Facing Gaia, Philosopher Bruno Latour describes a radical strategy for coping with the ‘new climatic regime’. He calls upon Gaia, inspired by the primal image of Mother Earth, to reject modern humans who, through their disrespectful plunder of the planet, brought us to a general state of crisis. Latour proposes we change our relationship with our environment but this can only be realized by what he calls the Earthbound. The Earthbound are occupied by the earth, in contrast to the Humans who occupy the earth disrespectfully. According to Latour we have to make new marks on the earth, we have to think beyond the imaginary realm of twodimensional maps with highlighted borders. If anybody can help us develop the imagination and courage necessary for these tasks, it is probably artists.6 This framework might offer an interesting perspective for exploring the work of Mendieta. By acknowledging that nature and its elements all have agency, she was able to think beyond the boundaries of religion, history and identity. She did not just simply use the environment, but ensured cross-integration via mutual respect. Her worldview is not anthropocentric, and the relationship of man to his environment is crucial. Just as the Earthbound relate to a system, a network of other actors, Mendieta’s work is an interaction between the land and the actions and traces of a woman. She addressed live relationships and the flux of all earthly elements, including the flesh of the human animal.7
THE FOUR ELEMENTS
“I believe in water, air, and earth. They are all deities.” Ana Mendieta, c. 19848
The works selected for Earthbound all express Mendieta’s fascination for earth, water, air, fire and their elemental energy. According to the artist, their agency is their purifying power of transformation, which enhances nature’s regenerative quality. The four elements and the relationships between them have a spiritual power and universality that enable us to connect with them. In her art, Mendieta incorporated spiritual elements from Santería, the Afro-Cuban religion that mixes facets of African religeous practices and Catholicism. She was particularly fascinated by the rituals and the iconography of certain Orishas (deities) such as Ochún, the Santería goddess of the water, who has the power to bring unity. In the video work of the same name, Ochún is a suitable metaphor for Mendieta’s separation from Cuba and the return to her native country later in life. The water in this film also refers to distance and the passage of time, and symbolizes a kind of reconciliation with her status as a displaced person. It shows extremely well how Mendieta manages to turn a spiritual element into a universal work that transforms her personal suffering into a strategy to defuse the incompatible forces of her destiny.
ARTWORKS
1 BLOOD + FEATHERS, 1974
In September 1974, Ana Mendieta created Blood + Feathers, covering her body with blood before rolling in white poultry feathers. The performance was filmed and photographed at Old Man’s Creek in Iowa (US), where many of her outdoor earthbody pieces were made. In this work she transforms herself into a birdwoman by the use of blood and feathers, evoking ritualistic practices, interpreted in the artist’s specific, personal manner. By incorporating spiritual symbols such as the white bird, Mendieta infused her gesture with multiple levels of meaning. Birds are a familiar cultural symbol, frequently associated with the sky, with flight and speed, with freedom and magic, and as messengers.9
silhouette with found elements, leaving the work to be eventually washed away with the tide. The second body of work is the group of transformative bird works that includes Blood + Feathers 1 .
SILUETAS Mendieta’s most representative works are probably those of the Silueta (Silhouette) Series, where she used her own body, or a shape representing the female form, to merge with nature. She realized her first Silueta work (1973) by lying naked, covered with flowers, on a Mixtec tomb at the archeological site of Yagul in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Achieving self-transformation into alternative forms of being was of crucial importance to Mendieta.10 Her birdwoman pieces connect the secular to the sacred, the material to the spiritual, temporal life to the eternal.11 In the late seventies, there was a growing interest in performance art, and Antwerp’s ICC (Internationaal Cultureel Centrum) introduced artists such as James Lee Byars and Ana Mendieta as part of a radical new program. At the invitation of curator Flor Bex, Mendieta performed a work similar to Blood + Feathers in ICC on April 23, 1976.
“The making of my Silueta in nature keeps the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature.” Ana Mendieta, c. 197612
3 SILUETA VERDE (SILUETA SERIES), 1976
2 OCEAN BIRD (WASHUP) (FILMWORK NO. 25), 1974
In the summer of 1974, on the peninsula of Salina Cruz in Mexico, Ana Mendieta performed Ocean Bird (Washup). In the film documenting this piece, Mendieta floats on the waves along the shoreline of La Ventosa and lets the gentle tide wash her ashore, where she remains for the duration of the film. Ocean Bird (Washup) can be seen as a bridge between two bodies of work in Mendieta’s oeuvre. The way in which she experiences nature’s rhythm through the movements of the waves anticipates her other process pieces of 1974, in which she interacts with and becomes one with her environment. This idea is fully realized in her later Siluetas (see 3 4 7 8 and 9 ), notably the 1976 beach pieces in which she configured her
This photographic work of an anthropomorphic shape with outstretched arms, created in nature by the slight manipulation of natural elements, is typical for Mendieta’s Silueta Series. In these pieces she rearranges plants, cut grass, cacti, stones, sand, mud and other organic materials to create an abstracted feminine form. According to Mendieta, the photographic evidence of the result is more than a documentation of her traces on earth. She intended these images to represent her sculptures, as a necessary accomplice. In actual fact, she considered herself a sculptor above all, rather than a performance artist or a creator of ‘earth art’ or ‘process art’. “My work is basically in the tradition of a Neolithic artist. […] I’m not interested in the formal qualities of my materials, but their emotional and sensual ones.”13 Ana Mendieta, 1984
Silueta Verde (Silueta Series) could refer to the very first Silueta Mendieta realized, in 1973, on a Mixtec tomb. The symbol of the grave and a connection to the (parallel) universe are very visible in this piece, as well as in Burial Pyramid (film no. 27), 1974 5 and Grass Breathing (film no. 34), 1974 6 .
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9
UNTITLED SILUETA SERIES, 1979 THREE RING SILUETA, 1977
In her ongoing explorations of the Siluetas, shown in these two photographic works, Mendieta discovered infinite ways to animate the idea that nature is alive, reproductive, and eternal. Working alone, she created them from seemingly every imaginable natural element - wood, dirt, grass, snow, water, fire, trees, flowers, leaves, and stones. In other works from this series she pressed the Silueta shape into the wet ground, leaving its imprint behind; she burned it into the earth; she carved it into the opening of a cave.14 The Siluetas started as a series of self-portraits in which she literally inscribed her body into the natural environment – whether it be earth, water or another material – sometimes in synchrony with her own rituals for healing and transcendence. She explained that this long series of works recalled the prehistoric beliefs in an omnipresent female force, which took form as though everything in creation were a part of a woman’s body, thus rendering the earth a living being.15
5 BURIAL PYRAMID (FILMWORK NO. 27), 1974
With the start of the Silueta Series, she chose a manner of working that was completely en plein air, in close contact with the landscape. She explained the genesis of the Siluetas as a manifestation of her striving to find her place, her context within nature – working directly in situ, in the simplest manner possible, alone, if she could, fulfilling a series of ritual actions.16 Burial Pyramid was produced in the summer of 1974, next to the steps leading to a large pyramid tomb at the archeological site of Yagul (Mexico). Here she explores associations with burial
practices and archeological ruins, whilst taking the unification of her body with the earth even further. First the stones move slightly, then she emerges gradually from beneath them and lies on the ground, as though she has become a self-excavated artifact, an expression of her intention to create a timeless union with la tierra, the feminine land, or ‘mother earth’.17 Crucial in understanding Ana Mendieta’s work is to know that she regards herself – or the fleshly body – as one of the elements aside from water, air, fire and earth. They are all experienced as agents here. She displaces the anthropocentric status of art by a vision of human production as only one aspect of a living system of earthly creations and relations.18
6 GRASS BREATHING (FILMWORK NO. 34), 1974
In Grass Breathing, a mound in the middle of a recently resodded lawn suggests the presence of the artist underneath. As Mendieta inhales and exhales, the movement of her body causes the sod to rise and fall. Her recognition of herself as an element of nature – and in nature – is a process that sees her absorbed by it, becoming pure energy. She is the burnt wood, the sand eroded by waves, the moss on the bark, the incised rock, the bundle of branches, the bed of flowers, the water trapped in ice – in a state of ongoing mutation.19 In works such as Silueta Verde, Burial Pyramid en Grass Breathing she explores ideas associated with death and the body’s return to the earth; from fairly literal preparations of the body to the most subtle embodiments of reunion with nature.20
8 AIR Mendieta sees the body as one of the natural elements. She expresses air, for example, by the metaphor of ‘breath’. There is a moving perception of nature’s breathing, within which humanity itself breathes. In many works, Mendieta underlines the co-existence of human and natural breathing, literally making grass breathe (Grass Breathing, 1974), as well as a heap of stones (Burial Pyramid, 1974). Faced with her continuous identification with nature, the observer never knows at what point lies her metamorphosis and the shift from human to natural element.21
7 UNTITLED: SILUETA SERIES (FILMWORK NO. 62), 1978
UNTITLED: SILUETA SERIES (FILMWORK NO. 72), 1979
Untitled: Silueta Series (film no. 72) sees the artist carve the opening of a small cave-like structure into her typical Silueta shape, anticipating her epic Esculturas Rupestres made two years later in Cuba.25 Caves are shelters, places where ancient civilizations left their traces, thought by some to be the entrance to the magical insides of the earth. Mendieta’s interest in these locations stems from Cuban folklore, which considers caves to be the origin of mankind.
According to curator Olga Viso, Ana Mendieta’s fascination for burial customs and traditions led her to explore the use of fire as an element of purification and transformation in her art. She drew inspiration from a variety of Mexican popular traditions including the lighting of candles around graves for nocturnal Day of the Dead vigils and the burning of papier-mâché Judas figures. Documentary slides in the Mendieta archive record her study of ritual objects, and works such as Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978 or Ñañigo Burial, 1976 translated these powerful traditions into her art.23
FIRE The art critic Lucy Lippard notes that fire is a universal symbol of transformation, and is considered to be the birthplace of the earth, and the boundary between life and death. Between 1974 and 1981, Mendieta made 38 (of 104) films documenting burning Siluetas. Central to the ritual process is repetition. Each film shows a different Silueta, conveying the complex ways in which Mendieta interprets a single form.
As the film opens, we see a deep blue night sky with a pattern of bare trees silhouetted against it. A single fire is burning in the center of the frame. Slowly, the Silueta form mysteriously appears and is presented vertically instead of lying on the ground. The human figure emerging from the flames is a surprising image. Usually, we associate a burning tree with a fire that is dangerous and out of control. But this fire, and the way it grows, creates a feeling of respect and awe, rather than fear. Endlessly inventive, Mendieta’s work destabilizes and redefines our expectations, our comfort, our notions of beauty, and our fears.22
In 1976, Mendieta created her first gunpowder work, using a homemade recipe that included sulfur, sugar and saltpeter. The fire Siluetas draw upon layers of meaning found in the multiple materials used: fire, the effects of light, the variety of elements and the accoutrements of ritual.24
“Fire has always been a magical thing for me … fusion … its transformation of materials.” Ana Mendieta, 1981
10 UNTITLED, 1981/2018
From 1980 onwards, Mendieta was able to travel back to Cuba. On her second trip, in January 1981, she connected with the contemporary art scene in Havana, meeting artists, researching historical sites and eventually making works on Cuban soil.
This photographic work depicts carving and painting into rock formations in Varadero, Cuba. Created several months before the Esculturas Rupestres (rupestre means ‘carved rock’), they appeared to be trials for the larger undertaking that was to come.26
12 CREEK (FILMWORK NO. 22), 1974
During the last five years of her life she was already experimenting with reprinting earlier photographic works in large format that she mounted on masonite, as a hybrid of photograph and object. The scale translates in a very physical and bodily connection with the visitor, the work functioning as a sculpture rather than a two-dimensional photograph.27
11 ESCULTURAS RUPESTRES (FILMWORK NO. 98), 1981
There is a strong duality in this work: she is exposed, unprotected,and vulnerable to whatever dangers might be present but at the same time, she seems totally safe, secure, and innocent of any threat or harm. By dividing the frame into two parts, it’s as if her body has symbolically established a dialectical relationship between vulnerability and safety. She holds these two ideas in equilibrium; she is absolutely balanced. The overall effect is incredibly peaceful, beautiful and serene.28
The Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures) were lifesized figures Mendieta carved and painted into the natural limestone in two locations in the Jaruco national park near Havana. Jaruco’s rocky outcroppings had served as refuge for pirates during the colonial era. Mendieta was drawn to the site and intrigued by its rich and varied history.
WATER Between 1974 and 1981, Mendieta made 19 (of 104) films that feature the element of water. The use of water carries with it a variety of associations, including the notion of a spiritual quest or purification. The water symbolizes rebirth but is at the same time the element that separated her as a young adolescent from her family in Cuba.
They would prove to be among Mendieta’s most significant works of the period. According to curator Olga Viso, she was able to bring the Silueta Series to its “source” in Cuba, connecting to the Amerindian civilizations and generations of Cubans that came before her. Her growing professional network on the island helped her obtain the permission from the Cuban Ministry of Culture she needed for the project in Jaruco. She named the sculptures after pre-Hispanic goddesses from the Taíno and Ciboney cultures: Guacar (Our Menstruation), Atabey (Mother of the Waters), Itiba Cuhababa (Old Mother Blood), and Guabancex (Goddess of Wind). This illustrates how Mendieta connected earthly elements like wind and water to divine power and spirituality.
In Creek (film no. 22), 1974, Mendieta is laying in a creek, the water gently rushing over and around her nude body, a symbolic merging with the element of water, the source of life. This earlier film has no beginning, middle or end, creating a sense of timelessness. Both a metaphorical and a literal submersion, Creek beautifully expresses Mendieta’s ideas about collaborating with nature through the artistic process.
According to art critic Donald Kuspit, one can regard Mendieta’s performances as purification rituals: bathing herself in the purity of the elements …29
13 OCHÚN, (FILMWORK NO. 104), 1981
This video is, as far as we know, Ana Mendieta’s last moving image work. She manages to transform the pain of separation into a restrained poem of color, light, movement, and sound. We immediately notice that this Silueta shape is open at the top and base, very different from the ones she created previously. This critical nuance changes its significance, and registers on
a deeper level of meaning. The form is literally and figuratively expanded. Instead of being surrounded by water and coexisting with it, the body is metaphorically and physically in and of the water.
Their scary and colorful attire would both fascinate and repel the children. As a child, Mendieta was enthralled by the Ñañigo and other aspects of Cuban Santería practice. The union between opposing natural forces, as illustrated in Ñañigo Burial by absence and presence, remained an important motif in Mendieta’s oeuvre. In many of her Silueta works, she matches positive with negative space, water with earth, fire with air, and concave with convex forms. Her body shapes, sometimes mounded and built, at other times carved out and deep, also evoke the closeness of life and death, of birth and rebirth, as a kind of transformation and transcendence.31
The Cuban curator Gerardo Mosquera described Ochún as a “fantastic metaphor” of Mendieta’s separation from and her returns to Cuba, noting her use of the Afro-Cuban traditions. Ochún is the Santería goddess of the rivers, whose name was possibly derived from the Osun River in southwestern Nigeria. Mendieta’s choice of location – the shore off Key Biscayne, between the US mainland and Cuba – was crucial for the artwork. The water that ran through the Silueta was the same water that touched the shores of both islands. In Ochún she fully realized her simultaneous connections to both countries and to the water that runs between them. In many cultures water is a metaphor of exile and return over a long expanse of time.30
14 ÑAÑIGO BURIAL, 1976
The last work in the exhibition is a recreation of one of Mendieta’s important early works, originally created in February 1976 at 112 Greene Street, an alternative art space in New York. In this installation, Mendieta placed 47 black candles, such as those used in Haitian voodoo ceremonies, to trace the outline of her recumbent body, with arms raised, on the floor. This ancient form refers to a benevolent goddess symbolizing the transmutation of the Divine into the human. The candles were then lit and the form of the body could be seen in the flickering wicks. Over the course of the week of the installation, the candles burnt down and were replaced. Eventually, the growing mound of candle wax itself resembled a sculpted body. The title derives from Afro-Cuban folklore: the Ñañigo were a secret society of men founded in Cuba in the 19th century. They wore fantastic costumes and were masked so as to keep their identity secret. At festivals and during special occasions, the Ñañigo would announce their arrival with drums and dancing.
15 ANA MENDIETA, NATURE INSIDE, 2015
As a part of this exhibition, the film Ana Mendieta, Nature Inside touches upon the artist’s themes with corresponding still and moving images, highlighting the meanings behind her work. This 8-minute film, narrated by the artist, was created by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, the artist’s niece and Associate Administrator of her estate. Via several unique, previously unseen super 8 films, we dive into the world of Ana Mendieta. Documentary short by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta © Corazón Pictures, LLC
Curator: Pieter Boons Text: Luc Franken This exhibition is a collaboration with the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection & Galerie Lelong & Co.
BIOGRAPHY ANA MENDIETA Ana Mendieta (Havana, 1948 – New York, 1985) arrived in the US from Cuba in 1961, together with her three-year-older sister, Raquelin. They entered via Miami, as did 14,000 other unaccompanied Cuban minors transported by Operation Peter Pan, a program run by the US government and Catholic charities. Having spent a happy childhood in Havana and Varadero, as members of a middle-class family prominent in Cuba’s political life and society, Ana and Raquelin were now fleeing the communist regime of Fidel Castro. The girls would not see their mother and brother again until 1966, and it was 1979 before they were finally able to be reunited with their father. Ana and her sister spent their first weeks in refugee camps before moving between various institutions and foster homes in Iowa. In high school, Ana discovered a special interest in art. She went on to earn bachelor and master degrees in painting at the University of Iowa. Here she met professor and artist Hans Breder, founder of the university’s Intermedia Program, his aim being to activate the space between disciplines, media and art forms. In 1973, she began to visit pre-Columbian sites in Mexico. During this time the natural landscape took on an increasing importance in her work. In 1978 she moved to New York. From 1980 onwards, Mendieta started making return visits to Cuba, and in 1983 she was awarded the Prix de Rome and started a one-year residency in Rome. In 1985, at the age of thirty-six, Mendieta died in a fall from the window of her New York apartment.
All quotes by Ana Mendieta © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC
1 Charles Merewether, Ana Mendieta, published by Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1996, Barcelona, pp.111, 138. 2 Ana Mendieta, Application for Rome Prize Fellowship, 1983, Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. Quote © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. 3 Ana Mendieta, Artist Statement, Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. Quote © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. 4 Olga Viso, Mendieta, Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, pp.44-47. 5 Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Publishing, London, 2013, p.208. 6 Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia, Polity Press, 2017. 7 Adrian Heathfield in Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Publishing, London, 2013, p.24. 8 Linda Montano, An Interview with Ana Mendieta, c. 1984 – 85. Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. Quote © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. 9 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.164. 10 Olga Viso, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.49. 11 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.165. 12 Ana Mendieta, annotations for an exhibition in Mexico, 1976. Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. 13 Stephanie Rosenthal, Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Publishing, London, 2013, p.13. 14 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.172. 15 Beatrice Merz, Ana Mendieta: She Got Love, published by Skira, Milano, 2013, p.52. 16 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.166-167. 17 Beatrice Merz, Ana Mendieta: She Got Love, published by Skira, Milano, 2013, p.40. 18 Adrian Heathfield, Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Publishing, London, 2013, p.24. 19 Beatrice Merz, Ana Mendieta: She Got Love, published by Skira, Milano, 2013, p.40. 20 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.167. 21 Merz, Beatrice [edit.] Ana Mendieta: She Got Love, Skira, Milano, 2013, p.42. 22 Howard Oransky, Covered in Time and History, published by University of California Press, Oakland, 2015, p.124. 23 Olga Viso, Unseen Mendieta, published by Prestel, Munich, 2008, pp.153-154. 24 Howard Oransky, visitor text for exhibition Ana Mendieta, Covered in Time and History, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2018. 25 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.170. 26 Julia Herzberg, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, pp.79-89. 27 Olga Viso, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.84. 28 Olga Viso, Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, published by Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, p.98. 29 Donald Kuspit, Ana Mendieta, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 1996, p.50. 30 Howard Oransky, Covered in Time and History, published by University of California Press, Oakland, 2015, pp.158-159. 31 Mary Sabbatino, Ana Mendieta, published by Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 1996, pp.153-154.