One of the most innovative artists of the late 20th century, Ana Mendieta was a pioneer of multiple different movements including performance art and video art. Born in Cuba but forced to flee to the United States at the age of 12, she spent the next 15 years living in Iowa, where she created some of her most iconic works. Her untimely death from a fall out of her NYC apartment window at age 36 shocked the art world and raised questions about the potential involvement of her then-husband, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. However, she is best known today for her "earth-body" art works or Siluetas, one of which is now on view in the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields’ American galleries through a generous loan from the Art Bridges Foundation art sharing program. Art Bridges has also graciously supported a panel conversation for this loan, which will take place Sunday, April 19 from 1–2pm in the DeBoest Lecture Hall.

The Silueta Series involves Mendieta creating silhouettes or depressions of her own body in the earth, which were then filled with materials including leaves, twigs, and blood. These impressions in the land were frequently filmed with a hand-held Super 8 camera, documenting their processes of change and transformation. The work on view at the IMA is titled Fundamento de Palo Monte: Silueta Series (Gunpowder Works). Palo Monte is an Afro-Cuban diasporic religion focused on ancestor veneration, nature spirits, and the use of sacred sticks, or palo.

As the title implies, the hollow bodily form featured in this video is filled with gunpowder. A stack of rocks sits at the top center of the silueta, recalling a human heart. Over the duration of the film, the silueta is set ablaze and the incised body is obscured by thick white smoke, eventually revealing a pile of ash.

Filmed in Iowa, the work represents Mendieta’s process of becoming “whole” again as a Cuban exile living in the United States. Mendieta described the Silueta Series as a return to her origins and a reconnection with the land after a long period of separation and rootlessness: "Through my earth/body sculptures I become… an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body… I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body... I believe this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my homeland [Cuba] during my adolescence… My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source."

Although the work is described as an act of reunification and rebirth, the use of gunpowder also implies violence and destruction. As the viewer watches Mendieta’s silhouette ignite and burn, the work’s meaning becomes ambiguous—is this a joyous return to the land, a kind of deadly embrace, or both?

We are grateful to the Art Bridges Foundation for their loan program, which allows museums around the United States to borrow exceptional works of American art at no cost to the institution. It provides opportunities to get art works out of storage, share them with communities nationwide, and broaden experiences with American art. I’ll be moderating the April 19th panel featuring Indianapolis‑based interdisciplinary artist Shamira Wilson, Ohio‑based writer Rebe Huntman, and Associate Curator at the Des Moines Art Center Ashton Cooper. In recognition of Earth Day, the conversation will explore the context of Mendieta’s transformative work and how performance and ritual shape our understanding of the body, land, and mark‑making.