Raffaella Cortese is proud to present in the space of Via Stradella 7 a solo show by Ana Mendieta, which is taking place alongside an important retrospective at Castello di Rivoli in Turin.

Cuban exile, Mendieta studies at Iowa State University where she comes in contact with feminist movements and embraces the ideals of feminism. She realizes a personal synthesis of Body Art and Land Art, by undermining Land-artists majestic actions through the introduction of the human body in the landscape. In those years, she realizes ritual performances, photographs and sculptures, steeping her own body into nature, thus emphasizing her physical and spiritual link with the Earth. On show are her first works from the Seventies, where she confronts herself with the themes of discrimination, sexual violence and death. After reading about the rape and murder of a girl attending her university campus, Mendieta stages the brutal event using her own body: “ I’m working with my body and my blood”, she declares. Untitled Rape Performance, 1973 and Sweating Blood, 1973.

Mendieta borrows symbols and ritual practices from American, African and European native cultures, combining them with natural elements and “primitive” sacrificial rites, associated with the “santeria cubana”. In the “Siluetas” series, she uses blood, water, earth and fire to build up shapes which are reminiscent of her own body. The silhouettes are burned in wood, shaped by mounds of earth, grass, gun powder or flowers; they float on streams, erupt like volcanos or blend in with the landscape, as shown in the exhibited videos.

With her work, Mendieta has expressed “the immediacy of life and the eternity of nature”.