Silueta Works in Mexico, 1973-1977 (estate print 1991)

In her series ‘Siluetas,’ or “silhouettes,” Ana Mendieta recorded private performances and marks she made on the landscape in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. Unlike many long-lasting land art pieces of the period, Mendieta’s work relied on the temporary presence of her body, and as such only survives in these photographs. The artist, who arrived in the US at the age of twelve, in exile from Cuba and unaccompanied by her parents, spent her adolescence in orphanages and foster homes. Torn from her homeland, Mendieta felt “cast from the womb (nature)” and used her art to connect with Mother Earth by evoking ancient goddess and fertility archetypes. Her interventions—from a wooden effigy lit with fireworks under the moonlight to an imprint of her body in the sand filled with powdered pigment that is carried away by the tides and wind—are all simultaneously symbols of universal womanhood and iterations of a displaced individual.