until Saturday June 22 2013
Galerie Lelong
T : +1 (212) 315 0470
528 West 26th Street
10001 New York
United States
The sculptures, drawings, photographs, mixed media works, and films in Ana Mendieta: Late Works 1981-1985 at Galerie Lelong reveal Mendieta’s translation of her ephemeral practices in the landscape to independent art objects.
In the 1980s, Mendieta began to shift away from performative, documented work as exemplified in two of her last films, Ochún and Birth from 1981. These films depict siluetas, potent traces of the artist’s body in the landscape, transformed by the ocean tide or ignited gunpowder.
In 1982, she began creating numerous drawings directly onto fresh leaves she found in the landscape, using a variety of tools such as nails, needles, and pencils. Like her outdoor site-specific works, she embraced the natural effects of time on objects, such as the shifting color and texture of the leaves as they dried. Mendieta sought to fuse earth and form in her drawings, photographs, and sculptures. She created several sculptures that year including Fernwoman (1982), a unique sculpture standing close to five feet tall. Carved in an anthropomorphic shape from an Osmunda fern root, this work recalls primitive art.
Mendieta often repeated imagery in different media, such as the “labyrinth” figure seen in La Concha de Venus (1981-82), a drawing on amate (bark) paper, and in outdoor sculptures molded in mud which she then photographed. Works like these not only show Mendieta’s continued interest in imagery of the female body, but also show her attempt to make her work more accessible to art audiences and collectors in the 1980s.
Mendieta’s late sculptures translate her familiar silueta-like forms into more tangible objects that became less specific to her own body and not tied to an exact location. This development can be seen in the floor sculptures Figure with Nganga (1984) and Untitled (1983-84), which show an affinity to works she made in the landscapes of places like Cuba, Iowa, and Mexico.
Ana Mendieta: Late Works 1981-1985 is the ninth solo exhibition of Mendieta’s work at Galerie Lelong, which has represented her Estate since 1991.
