I feel obsessed with the fiberoptics and doors, drawing them everywhere and all the time, trying to figure out how to combine them and what that means.
Obsessing about the wings as well wondering how that fits into the picture, and putting the wings on a body, some body, a female form, which resonates even stronger after Ana Mandieta exhibition and her obsession with placing Silouetas everywhere in nature. What does the for represent? Why do I feel that’s important? A desperate need to make a mark, to not become invisible.
Desperately connecting to what she said “the obsession in my work – to reaffirm myself in this world”
Inspired by the idea of removing myself from the narrative, putting myself in the space and then removing myself so only the Silueta remains
La Junggla (Totem Grove) 1985 Wood and Gunpowder. Mendieta sourced and carved plane and linden trees from L’Aquila and Rome. She then hollowed the trunks and burnt them with gunpowder. Most likely a prototype for an unfinished project set to be installed at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The unfinished part is what resonates the most, who decides when and why it’s unfinished? Is it wrong?
Untitled: Silueta Series 1979: a changing of seasons created over a decade depicting the outline or silhouette of a figure in the landscape using natural materials. A part of a series of three created in various US locations, representing Spring
Encountering Untitled: Silueta Series 1979, I absolutely love the red but then I am immediately worried about the environmental impact of letting the dye just seep into the seawater. Minding that the dye could be completely natural I feel that in 1979 the level of worry about our impact on the natural environment was nowhere as severe as it is now
Mendietas Work also resonates somehow with the Jura Shurt work I saw at Zacheta, as well as Agata Rucińska except theirs seem to embody the desperate need to bring nature into the galleries and worship it and try to become it due to an increasing lack of it in our everyday lives, of trying to get back to that connection and generate it because we completely lost it during the race for power, money and newness.
Mendietas seems to come from a sense of extremely deep natural connection that is always there, especially in this quote “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy. My works are the irrigation veins of this universal fluid.”
In April 1978, at the invitation of fellow artist Luis Camnitzer, Mendieta created Untitled: Silveta Series at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury. She transposed a life-sized forest within the exhibition space with the help of a group of students. As with this restaging at Tate, the piece was designed to be viewed from afar – it was a forest that could not be entered.
Here, the work has been re-imagined in the spirit of the artist’s practice by using natural materials sourced locally. The branches of a native oak tree which had to be felled due to disease are repurposed, along with leaves, soil, moss and stones.
This installation has been conceived according to photographic documentation from the artist’s archives
Adding my own , creepy silueta spotted today on a tree during a walk through the forest with a friend
Loved the view from above with the Silueta made from rocks and soil, The Grove which reminds me of my own willow creations, might combine with wings, see what happens, Totems she made with kids!!!
Sketches around trees, wings, doors, fibreoptics, trees, flowers, female shapes
