2022 . for fixed media . 20′ .
Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta was born in Havana in 1948. Forced to flee Cuba during a period of political unrest, she ended up moving to Iowa in the mid-1960s. She began studying painting at the University of Iowa in 1967 and continued to study both painting and intermedia in the graduate program until 1977. This is the era from which these photographs emerge, a period later referred to as her “Iowa Years.” For this work, I selected four images from this formative time of Ana’s life and created soundscapes to accompany them. Ana was only in her mid-twenties at the time she took these images. I feel a kindred spirit in her raw creativity as she her molds her sudsy locks into a comic imitation of a mustache, models and sculpts the outline of her body into untouched earth, captures female power and pain in the color red. Somehow, in just a small way, I hope that perhaps I am right now in my own “Iowa Years,” and I, too, will discover how to hone the rawness of my voice, how to harness power in the great mother figure of Earth, how to communicate the female experience in my work—just as Ana did in Iowa fifty years ago.
Four photographs by Ana Mendieta:
Untitled (Cosmetic Facial Variations), 1972
Imágen de Yágul, 1973
Body Tracks, 1974
Untilted: Silueta series, 1976
LUCY SHIRLEY 