Cuban Artist Ana Mendieta at the Hayward Gallery.

Where to start with Ana Mendieta? From her unsolved death on the 8 of September 1985, was she killed by her then husband and minimalist sculptor artist Carl Andre after a drunken argument? Or did she commit suicide? Her friends and family don't believe this to be true as they always described her as passionate, alive, argumentative this shows in her art work on show at the Hayward Gallery which I found deeply moving, her work stays with you after you leave. I was so moved that I wasn't even able to go and see the other exhibition by Dayanita Singh. If you have to go and see an exhibition go and see this one it's really not to be missed I am saying this especially to women as Ana Mendieta's work is direct and powerful. In fact the gallery was full of women slowly going from one picture to the other and then going back to it, I think there is a thirst in women to see other women artist's work that speaks to them. Ana Mendieta achieves this fully but it is sad that a lot of her works where not known and not shown in her life time the last section of the exhibition deals with this as during her lifetime she rigorously documented her work also with the help of her early boyfriend and academic Hans Breder. The last part of the exhibition presents a variety of documentary from slides to postcards she sent to friends and at the end one can take a poster of her, which I really enjoyed as it also includes her biography. 

Her work deals with the female body, she made silhouettes of her body in mud, earth, covered in grass, leaves: perfomance pieces of the female body connecting with earth. It is a feminist piece of work, political as she reclaimes blood as a feminist material in art. 

In her performance pieces, she uses blood in a transcendental way to evoke the power of female sexuality as part of the universe showing that we are just one with everything that surround us, it is a magical ritual where she reconnects with her South American roots, Native Cuba and ancient civilizations for example of her beloved Mexico. In Room 1 of the exhibition are a group of photos of herself, her body as as subject and object, self distorted portraits, one can see putting her face against a glass or her body against a piece of glass and being photographed.

There are photos of her transferring a friend's beard onto her own face where she plays with the notion of beauty, gender, belonging ( she escaped Cuba when she was young and lived in Iowa which was culturally very different from Cuba) her body looks sexy but there is pain in her work, ancestral female pain but by working with it through her art she gives energy to her work and transmutes the pain in defiant act of appropriation and liberation and show and independent spirit which is very empowering especially for a female audience. 

In Room 2 Rape scenes below on the left hand side there are photos of her self as she had been raped. The female body here is used to show male violence which was in response to a rape & murder that happened at her university, of a student nurse named Sarah Ann Otten.  It is been said that she would invite people around when in ' the scene' of rape and she would stay in the same position for up to two hours which was documented by a friend on 35 mm colour slides.  

Also powerful in Room 2 are her paintings done with blood and tempera which are also filmed called ‘Body tracks’ she deeps her hands in blood and arms and smears them on to walls and paper in quite a precise manner and in opposition to the work of Yves Klein 1960 Anthropometries where he used naked women with their bodies covered in paint like living brushes while Mendieta is fully clothes and presses herself against the wall in act of defiance.. Also blood is central the ritual practised by the Catholic Church through wine in which she was raised.

In 1971 she went to Mexico for research and she said that the experience was ' like going back to the source, being able to get some magic just by being there'. From Mexico her work becomes more unified and will incorporate different elements self, nature, place, sculpture, performance, drawing and she creates her first silhouettes where nature takes over her body where she looks at her context within nature she basically recorded her physical presence both in Mexico and Iowa after this she replaces her actually body with imprint of her self in mud on trunks. Then there are photos called Blood and Feathers,  where Mendieta is shown naked and covered in feathers which shows parallels with indigenous cultures and shamanism.

Photographs of her art & performance pieces are the permanent piece of her transient work, performance.  

She also created mummy like figures of her self shown in Room 5 in memory of Native Americans who inhabited the area and in reference to other ancient cultures like the Mayan cultures. Through her reference of the goddess Ixchell, with this work she focuses on life death and rebirth while researching her origins. The photographs in the first part of the exhibition are small and in colour but Room 6 in her later stage they become larger and black and white.

In Room 9 (the 1980's period) where she started making permanent outdoor sculptures made out of mud and a binding agent which are covered in cracks, flat on the ground and together look quite abstract using sand from Cuba and Egypt some inspired by Maltese culture where women where matriarchal, sexless and large which feel like big wombs. In this section are also large trunks of of trees that had died which she transformed by drawing silhouettes in them reinforcing the idea of the tree of life.

Another moving artwork made out of a bunch of black melted candles outlining a human body on the floor which felt strongly ritualistic to do with occultism and about death, called Ranigo Burial below. I actually saw the piece when the lights where not on but it still moved me.

Finally in Room 7 are her drawings drawn on a type of bark paper made by the Otomani people in Mexico other images are drawn on paper made by her.

The images where down in ink or dark acrylic, I mean they look black and felt ghostly being in a room surrounded by dark silhouettes felt quite spooky. They are figures associated with Cuba's indigenous Taino culture so in a way she was trying to reconnect with her ancestry. She also drew on leaves on the copy or autograph leaves and when living in Italy she used any leaves she could find to draw on but I found this work weak lacking of the visceral immediacy of earlier work done with her body or imprints of it (she stayed at the American academy in Rome) she loved Rome, Italy and felt accepted there. On show are also photos of the Tree of Life which Mendieta saw as a being protective and as a regenerative force and also a symbol of family and it is considered one of the most important theme in her work from this she drew inspiration and created silhouettes called Albero de Lavita or Tree of Life and they are mostly upright unlike the earth horizontal flat bound one. The poses required staying still for long periods of time too, required stamina and self control. She had to stay completely still while breathing through a straw as her body was covered in dried mud and was indistinguishable from the dead tree, see below.