Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was a Cuban-American photographer, performance artist, and sculptor interested in the relationship between the female body and nature. She is best known for her iconic "Silueta" series, which she created from 1973-77, and which comprise photographs and video footage of he rown body camouflaged in a natural environment. To produce the works, she would often fill in the silhouette of her body with materials from nature, reflecting an interest in primal rituals and a modern feminist sensibility. Mendieta wanted to invoke the "magic, knowledge, and power of primitive art...to express the immediacy of life and the eternity of nature," as she once said.

Born in Havana, Cuba, she immigrated to the United States at the age of 12 to flee the oppressive Castro regime, leaving her parents behind in Cuba. The artist's nomadic early life had a profound impact on her, and much of her work addressed her desire to return to her homeland. "My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence," she has said of her work. "It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature."