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COVERED IN TIME AND HISTORYTHE FILMS OF ANA MENDIETA10 | 16 | 2018 – 01 | 27 | 2019

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PARTNERS

Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta is organized by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with Jeu de Paume, Paris, for the presentation in Paris. The exhibition is made possible in part by the Office of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, the National Endowment for the Arts, a gift of Agnes Gund, the Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts, Kate and Stuart Nielsen, Syma Cheris Cohn, Metropolitan Picture Framing, the Epson Corporation, and the Tierney Brothers Corporation.

The Jeu de Paume receives public funding from the ministère de la Culture

and its main corporate sponsors are the NEUFLIZE OBC BANKand MANUFACTURE JAEGER-LECOULTRE. n partenariat avec Samsung Display Solutions et Devialet.

A NOUS PARIS, Libération

Cover Ana Mendieta Creek, 1974, Film super-8, color, silent © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

SUMMARY

HIGHLIGHTS

PRESS RELEASE

BIOGRAPHY

QUOTES

PRESS VISUALS

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

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MEDIA PARTNERS

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition and the corresponding catalogue are the result of a three-year collaborative research project on the artist’s moving image practice conducted by the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, Galerie Lelong & Co., and the University of Minnesota. In preparation for the exhibition and book, the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection provided full access to the artist’s filmworks, transferred them to 2K high definition digital format for the exhibition, and provided still images of the entire film collection from the new high definition scans for the catalogue. Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, the artist’s niece, a filmmaker, and the Associate Administrator for the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, directed the restoration and digitization of the films, using the latest available high definition technology.

This research led to a fully detailed inventory of all the artist’s films and videos, demonstrating that between 1971 – 1981 Ana Mendieta made 104 moving image artworks, placing her at the center of the historic multidisciplinary shifts that occurred in post-war visual art practice as artists embraced new media. The exhibition catalogue includes an essay by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta that documents and explains the restoration and transfer of the films from the original analog format to high-definition digital media. The catalogue also includes the first ever published complete filmography of all the artist’s films, written by Laura Wertheim Joseph and edited by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, which details their production and exhibition history, and a supporting essay on the history of the films by Wertheim Joseph. These essays have been described in the United States as “touchstones for how scholars need to treat film made by artists in the 1970s and 1980s.”

This research enabled the exhibition curators to understand for the first time the totality of Mendieta’s work in the filmic medium over the ten-year period 1971 – 1981 and to the identify the enduring themes which appear and re-appear across the arc of her production. These themes are: memory, history, culture, ritual, and the passage of time and are generally distilled and explored through the relationship of the body and the land. Nature figures prominently in Mendieta’s films: 75 of the 104 films take place in nature. The artist was fascinated by the four classical elements found in nature: earth, water, air and fire -- 38 of the films feature fire and 19 of the films feature water. The presentation at Jeu de Paume is organized around these ideas, themes and elements that characterize Mendieta’s filmic practice.

Like her work in other artistic mediums, Ana Mendieta’s work in the filmic medium crossed the boundaries and hierarchies of established art historical discourse and disrupted established categories of expression and documentation. While Mendieta made documentary films – that is, films intended to document her artworks, the same films were also intended to be experienced as artworks unto themselves. And she made films that operate outside the standard definition of documentation. As Laura Wertheim Joseph has observed, “Because she intended the viewer to experience her work in future time, neither the slides nor the films had an evidential or supplemental relationship to the performative action. Mendieta understood her work to reside in different material, temporal, and spatial registers.”

Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta is the largest gathering of filmworks by this highly acclaimed artist ever presented as a full-scale museum exhibition in France. The exhibition is comprised of 20 films and 27 related photographs. Thanks to the research and restoration project, the exhibition includes the following six films that are now being publicly circulated for the first time: Blood Inside Outside, 1975 (No. 35), Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978 (No. 62), Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978 (No. 66), Untitled: Silueta Series, 1979 (No. 72), Untitled: Silueta Series, 1979 (No. 73), and Untitled, 1981 (no. 101) which was discovered for the first time in the Ana Mendieta Archive by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta just as the exhibition was being finalized.

The exhibition includes the documentary short film Ana Mendieta: Nature Inside by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta. This film includes rarely-seen images of the artist and a voice track of Ana Mendieta speaking about her work in a lecture she gave at Alfred University in 1981. Nearby in the Jeu de Paume gallery is a vitrine with filmmaking ephemera, curated by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta.

In 1973 I did my first piece in an Aztec tomb that was covered in weeds and grasses – that growth reminded me of time. I bought flowers at the market, lay on the tomb, and was covered with white flowers. The analogy was that I was covered by time and history.

Ana Mendieta

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Ana Mendieta Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), 1976, Film super-8, color, silent © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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The exhibition Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta is the first museum exhibition devoted to the filmworks of this highly acclaimed Cuban-American artist (Havana, 1948 - New York, 1985). Bringing together 20 moving image works and 27 related photographs, the exhibition is the largest gathering of the artist’s filmic work ever presented as a full-scale exhibition in France.

Ana Mendieta is widely regarded as one of the most prolific and innovative artists of the post-war era. The recent exhibitions devoted to her work in Europe (Berlin, London, Prague, Salzburg, Turin and Umeå) revealed the power of her artistic vision and the influence of her work on the generations of artists that came after her. Mendieta’s work continues to have a strong impact on people of all ages and backgrounds.

During her brief career, from 1971 to 1985, Ana Mendieta produced a remarkable body of work, including drawings, installations, performances, photographs and sculptures. Lesser known, her production of films and videos is particularly impressive and prolific: her 104 filmworks produced between 1971 and 1981 make Ana Mendieta one of the leading figures in the practice of multidisciplinary visual art that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Thanks to new research into Mendieta’s work in the filmic medium, the exhibition at the Jeu de Paume repositions the moving image from the periphery to the centre of her work, and is organized around the recurring themes explored in the films, including memory, history, culture, ritual and the passage of time, which are often distilled through the relationship of the body and the land. The majority of Mendieta’s films take place in nature and often feature her interest in the four classical elements: earth, water, air and fire.

During the 1970s Mendieta travelled to Mexico nearly every summer, where she made many important artworks. The themes of memory and history are introduced in Silueta del Laberinto and Burial Pyramid, both produced in Yagul, Mexico, in the summer of 1974, in which, Mendieta defines her unique earth-body aesthetic by merging her body with the land and the ancient culture it symbolized. The exhibition presents these films together with Mirage, 1974, and Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978. Mirage explores personal memory through the story of Mendieta’s separation from her family in Cuba, by means of a dual narrative relating the mother-daughter relationship. Untitled: Silueta Series

reveals Mendieta’s interest in the ritualistic aspect of art and the transformation of the earth into a sacred space.

The exhibition includes four films from a series of eighteen Mendieta made between 1972 and 1975 that incorporated the use of blood as an artistic material. These films explore the themes of the body, identity, gender, and ritual. Sweating Blood, from 1973, is the only film that features Mendieta’s face in extreme close-up, seen through an attenuated sense of time. The exhibition includes one of the rare films in which Mendieta is seen writing out a declarative statement by hand: Blood Sign, from 1974. Blood Inside Outside, made in 1975, is an astonishing psychological study of autonomy and vulnerability, rendered with unflinching honesty. Corazón de Roca con Sangre, from the same year, presents a ritualistic narrative of spiritual redemption in which the stone heart of the artist is magically brought to life in the merging of the artist’s body and the earth.

The themes of earth, fire and the tree of life are presented at Jeu de Paume through a collection of seven films shown together in the same gallery. Mendieta used fire in 38 of her films. Birth (Gunpowder Works), from 1981, is a wonderfully graphic film in which the dried, cracked mud and the light of the Iowan landscape give birth to a dream of artistic magic and power. Three films made in 1979 are presented together in a related arrangement: Volcán, Untitled: Silueta Series (No. 72) and Untitled: Silueta Series (no. 73). In the first, the artist uses the form of the volcano as a metaphor for the earth as a site of solace and disaggregation. In the second, a silueta shape burns inside a cave-like structure Mendieta has also carved into her silueta form. The third burning silueta in this group brings together in one abstracted form the component selves of earth, body and tree.

Mendieta described the tree of life as one of her enduring themes. It is presented at Jeu de Paume in a grouping of three related films. In Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978 (No. 62), we see a tree in the Iowa landscape; three hands magically appear as the tree burns, forming the silueta. Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), 1976, is one of the most memorable artworks to emerge from the 1970s. The silueta shape, floating vertically in the night sky over Oaxaca, Mexico, may be seen as a tree of life sharing its light for the time it takes to burn itself out. Energy Charge, 1975, has a mysterious, ritualistic, Gothic sensibility.

Ana Mendieta Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), 1976, Film super-8, color, silent © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

COVERED IN TIME AND HISTORYTHE FILMS OF ANA MENDIETA10 | 16 | 2018 – 01 | 27 | 2019

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The work has a performative component and combines video and 16 mm film to present the idea of the tree of life.

Jeu de Paume presents a sequence of five films, which seen together in the gallery illuminate Mendieta’s personal, political and spiritual biography. Water figures prominently in 19 of the 104 filmworks made by Mendieta, where it functions as a metaphor for spiritual unity. Creek, 1974, filmed at San Felipe Creek in Oaxaca, Mexico, is a sublime work of art, deceptively simple in its composition and dissolution of traditional narrative structure. In Silueta de Arena, 1978, the silueta figure appears in place of the artist’s body; it is the idea of the body. The water in this film has patiently burnished the figure’s surface.

The three last filmworks in the exhibition, all made in 1981, form a trilogy on the relationship between displacement, return and reconciliation. Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures) is the epic cycle of sculptures that Mendieta carved into the limestone walls of the Cuevas de Jaruco. A journey through real and metaphorical time, this film marks Mendieta’s return to Cuba and her link with the ancient myths of the Jaruco Caves. Untitled takes place on the beaches of Guanabo, near Havana. Here, Mendieta speaks of the longing for her homeland and the extended time of separation. Ochún is a video produced off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida. The silueta figure here points towards Cuba, the waters between Florida and Cuba rippling through its form. Ochún, who owes her name to a Santería goddess, transforms the pain of separation into a restrained poem made of colours, light, movement and sound.

The exhibition includes the documentary short film Ana Mendieta: Nature Inside by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta. This film features rarely-seen images of the artist and a voice track of Ana Mendieta speaking about her work in a lecture she gave at Alfred University in 1981. Nearby in the Jeu de Paume gallery is a vitrine with film-making ephemera and equipment, curated by Raquel Cecilia Mendieta.

Curators: Lynn Lukkas and Howard Oransky

Produced by Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota in collaboration with the Jeu de Paume for the presentation in Paris

Ana Mendieta Creek, 1974, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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1948Ana Mendieta is born in Havana, Cuba.

1961Mendieta and her sister are sent to the United States via Operation Peter Pan.

1967-69In college, Mendieta majors in French and minors in art. She receives a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Iowa.

1971-72Mendieta becomes a naturalized citizen of the U.S. She receives a Master of Arts degree.

1973-75Mendieta creates her first Silueta in Mexico. The Silueta Series is the artist’s most well-known body of work, created between 1973-80 in locations including Iowa and Mexico. She incorporates materials such as blood, fire, water, and earth, documenting the works in still and moving images.

1976Mendieta’s first solo exhibition in New York is held at 112 Green Street.

1977Mendieta receives a Master of Fine Arts degree. A solo exhibition of Silueta Series photos is held at the Corroboree: Gallery of New Concepts, University of Iowa. She receives a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

1978-79Mendieta moves to New York City. She becomes a member of A.I.R. Gallery, a women’s collective art space, where her Silueta Series photographs are exhibited. She is awarded a Creative Arts Program Services grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

1980Mendieta returns to Cuba for the first time. She is awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an NEA grant.

1981In Jaruco, Cuba, Mendieta creates the Rupestrian Sculptures, abstracted figures carved into rock formations. These works are exhibited at A.I.R.

1982Mendieta creates objects such as sculptures made from natural materials. She receives a grant from the New York Council on the Arts and an NEA fellowship.

1983-84Mendieta is awarded the Prix de Rome from the American Academy where she continues to create sculptures which are exhibited at the American Academy Gallery and Galleria Primo Piano.

1985Mendieta marries the artist Carl Andre. She falls to her death from the window of Andre’s 34th-floor apartment in New York.

ANA MENDIETA

Portrait d’Ana Mendieta © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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QUOTES

And so, as my whole being is filled with want of Cuba, I go on to make my mark upon the earth, to go on is victory.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta, Artist’s notes, March 20, 1981.

My art is grounded on the primordial accumulations, the unconscious urges that animate the world, not in an attempt to redeem the past, but rather in confrontation with the void, the orphan-hood, the unbaptized earth of the beginning, the time that from within the earth looks upon us.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta, Proposal for La Maja de Yerba, Bard College, 1984.

Art must have begun as nature itself, in a dialectical relationship between humans and the natural world from which we cannot be separated.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta, Proposal for the New York State Council on the Arts, March 17, 1982.

I believe in water, air and earth. They are all deities. They also speak. I am connected with the goddess of sweet water.

Ana Mendieta

Linda Montano, “An Interview with Ana Mendieta,” 1984.

I have themes in my work, certain things that I do over and over. And one of them has always been becoming one with the tree...the tree of life.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta, lecture at Alfred University, New York, September 1981, Transcription of VHS recording. Ana Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York.

I started using blood because I think it’s a very powerful, magical thing. I don’t see it as a negative force.

Ana Mendieta

Judith Wilson, “Ana Mendieta Plants Her Garden,” The Village Voice, August 13-19, 1980, page 71.

The making of my silueta in nature is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta, Notes written for an exhibition of work done in Mexico.

Using my body as a reference in the creation of the works, I am able to transcend myself in a voluntary submersion and a total identification with nature. Through my art, I want to express the immediacy of life and the eternity of nature.

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta, Artist’s statement for Ana Mendieta: Silueta Series 1977, Corroboree Gallery of New Concepts, University of Iowa, December 5 – 23, 1977.

SourceAna Mendieta Archives, Galerie Lelong & Co., New York.Ana Mendieta © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

Ana MendietaCorazón de Roca con Sangre, 1975, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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1. Ana Mendieta Sweating Blood, 1973, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

2. Ana Mendieta Imágen de Yágul, 1973/2018, color photograph © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

PRESS VISUALSThe royalty-free reproduction and display of the following selection of images is permitted solely as part of the promotion of this exhibition at the Jeu de Paume and only while the exhibition is in progress.

The images may not be cropped or surprinted.

The images may only be reproduced prior to or during the exhibition at the Jeu de Paume.

Reproduction of each photograph must be accompanied by the exact title and copyright noticethat appears at the bottom of the photograph and as set forth above.

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3. Ana Mendieta Creek, 1974, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

4. Ana Mendieta Silueta del Laberinto (Laberinth Blood Imprint), 1974, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

5. Ana Mendieta Burial Pyramid, 1974, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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6. Ana Mendieta Energy Charge, 1975, film 16 mm © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

7. Ana MendietaCorazón de Roca con Sangre, 1975, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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8. Ana Mendieta Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece), 1976, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

9. Ana MendietaSilueta de Arena, 1978, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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10. Ana Mendieta Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. 11. Ana Mendieta Untitled: Silueta Series, 1978, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

12. Ana Mendieta Volcán, 1979, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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13. Ana Mendieta Volcán, 1979/1997, photograph © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

14. Ana MendietaUntitled: Silueta Series, 1979, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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15. Ana Mendieta Birth (Gunpowder Works), 1981, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

16. Ana Mendieta Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures), 1981, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

17. Ana Mendieta Guacar (Esculturas Rupestres), 1981/2018, [Our Menstruation (Rupestrian Sculptures)], photograph © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

18. Ana Mendieta Ochún, 1981, video © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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19. Ana Mendieta, Nature Inside, 2015, documentaire de Raquel Cecilia Mendieta © Corazón Pictures, LLC 20. Portrait d’Ana Mendieta © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

21. Portrait d’Ana Mendieta, 1981, film super-8 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

>> Covered in Time and History The Films of Ana Mendieta

Librairie du Jeu de Paume / www.librairiejeudepaume.org1, place de la Concorde, Paris 8e

Mardi (nocturne) : 11 h - 21 h – Mercredi à dimanche : 11 h - 19 h / Fermeture le lundi t. 01 47 03 12 36 / librairie@jeudepaume.org

Edited by Howard OranskyTexts by Lynn Lukkas, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, Howard Oransky, John Perreault, Michael Rush, Rachel Weiss, Laura Wertheim JosephPublication date: October 2018

English edition: Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana MendietaPublication date: September 2015Katherine E. Nash Gallery / University of California PressISBN: 978-0-520-28801-0 / 65 $, 50 £

French editionHardcover, 272 pages, 20.3 × 27.6 cm, 327 colour ill.Published by the Jeu de PaumeDistribution France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland: Les presses du réelInternational distribution: Idea BooksISBN: 978-2-915704-80-8 / €55

The Friends of the Jeu de Paume and the Galerie Lelong & Co, New York and Paris, contribute to the publication of the exhibition catalogue.

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