Ana Mendieta: Sileutas constituted MOCA's first presentation of Silueta Works in Mexico (1973–77), a portfolio of recently acquired photos by the iconic feminist artist. The series comprises twelve color photos of Mendieta’s performative bodily interventions in Oaxaca Valley, a subgroup of her larger Siluetas project, executed in Iowa and Mexico between 1973 and 1980. The largest and most significant series in Mendieta’s oeuvre, comprising thousands of slides of works, Siluetas is remembered through photos of the artist’s by-nature ephemeral installations. Each photo documents an impression of a woman’s body in a landscape, often Mendieta’s, variously outlined or covered in natural materials, indented into the earth, or built up with rocks and mud. These carefully composed images are rich with cultural references, often invoking goddess and fertility archetypes from Indigenous Central American and Caribbean religions.
Photographs from the Rupestrian Sculpture Series (1981) were also included in Ana Mendieta: Sileutas, illuminating another branch of Mendieta’s devoted artistic practice. These black-and-white images depicted Taíno fertility goddesses carved by the artist on the walls of a cave in Jaruco Park outside Havana. These works were made after Mendieta returned to her native Cuba in 1980 for the first time since her childhood.