Untitled (Guanaroca [First Woman])

About this Brooklyn Icon

The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

Ana Mendieta’s Silueta (Silhouette) and Esculturas Rupestres (Cave Sculptures) series (created between 1973 and 1980) were groundbreaking in their use of nontraditional art materials—such as mud, rock, sand, plants, and even gunpowder, usually in the shape of a female figure—to convey the interweaving of personal experiences and political themes of feminism, environmentalism, and exile. In Untitled (Guanaroca [First Woman]), Mendieta carved an abstracted female form into a soft limestone cave wall in Cuba, the land from which she was forced to immigrate as a child, and to which she returned as an adult. The title and voluptuous shape of the work refer to ancient Indigenous goddess and fertility figures as well as Mendieta’s own body and her relationship with the earth.

Like much of Mendieta’s work of this time, the ephemeral organic materials making up these silhouetted figures—and the actions or performances by the artist that inscribed them into the landscape—are documented through photographs and film. Although Mendieta’s work defies easy categorization, it is generally considered to be part of the movement known as Land Art, which includes such artists as Beverly Buchanan, Agnes Denes, Nancy Holt, and Robert Smithson and the body art movement, epitomized by Marina Abramović and Carolee Schneemann, among others.