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拍品专文
In the late 1970s, Ana Mendieta began to seriously consider returning to her native Cuba which, at age twelve, she had been forced to leave. Mendieta and her sister had been sent to the United States by their parents as part of Operation Pedro Pan, and, with no family in the country, they grew up in multiple foster homes in Iowa. This environment was so different to everything Mendieta had previously known that she carried the cultural displacement with her for the rest of her life.
As an adult, Mendieta came to believe that only by returning to her homeland could she confront her sense of dislocation, and in January of 1980, she undertook the first of seven known trips to Cuba. She travelled as part of a large group, visiting the island’s sites and making time to see her extended family. It was not until her second visit in early 1981, however, that Mendieta connected with the country’s art scene, likely using some of her time there to scout possible locations for Esculturas Rupestres, the life-sized, female figures she would go on to carve into the landscape of the Escaleras de Jaruco, a national park outside of Havana. To support the project, which commenced in July of 1981, Mendieta was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Once back in Cuba, she installed herself at a small hotel in Jaruco and proceeded to identify two locations to situate her art: a cave she referred to as the “Cueva del Ágila” or eagle’s cave, and a grotto where Maroya (Esculturas Rupestres), the present work, was created.
The scale and format of the Esculturas Rupestres recall Mendieta’s earlier Siluetas Series for which the artist shaped a female figure based upon her body into the ground. As Olga Viso noted, “She had brought the siluetas, a series of ongoing earth-body works devoted to the recuperation of origins and a lost homeland, to its very source” (“The Memory of history”, in O. Viso, Ana Mendieta, Earth Body: Sculpture and Performance, 1972-1985, exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., 2004, p. 81). As such, the Esculturas Rupestres, including Maroya, would be among the most significant of the artist’s career.
Maroya takes its name from a goddess associated with the Taíno people’s religious pantheon. The Taíno were a historic indigenous population who lived in the Caribbean region until the mid-sixteenth century when, owing to enslavement, starvation, and diseases brought by the Spanish, they largely died out. Mendieta, who had for several years been visiting pre-Columbian sites, developed an interest in the Taíno and saw their extinction as emblematic of a “deculturation” that was still occurring and with which she identified (A. Mendieta quoted in B. Clearwater, ed., Ana Mendieta: A Book of Works, Miami Beach, 1993, p. 17). Through her art practice, Mendieta sought to grapple with this sense of cultural disconnection broadly, and the Esculturas Rupestres allowed her to forge a physical link with her heritage.
As an adult, Mendieta came to believe that only by returning to her homeland could she confront her sense of dislocation, and in January of 1980, she undertook the first of seven known trips to Cuba. She travelled as part of a large group, visiting the island’s sites and making time to see her extended family. It was not until her second visit in early 1981, however, that Mendieta connected with the country’s art scene, likely using some of her time there to scout possible locations for Esculturas Rupestres, the life-sized, female figures she would go on to carve into the landscape of the Escaleras de Jaruco, a national park outside of Havana. To support the project, which commenced in July of 1981, Mendieta was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Once back in Cuba, she installed herself at a small hotel in Jaruco and proceeded to identify two locations to situate her art: a cave she referred to as the “Cueva del Ágila” or eagle’s cave, and a grotto where Maroya (Esculturas Rupestres), the present work, was created.
The scale and format of the Esculturas Rupestres recall Mendieta’s earlier Siluetas Series for which the artist shaped a female figure based upon her body into the ground. As Olga Viso noted, “She had brought the siluetas, a series of ongoing earth-body works devoted to the recuperation of origins and a lost homeland, to its very source” (“The Memory of history”, in O. Viso, Ana Mendieta, Earth Body: Sculpture and Performance, 1972-1985, exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., 2004, p. 81). As such, the Esculturas Rupestres, including Maroya, would be among the most significant of the artist’s career.
Maroya takes its name from a goddess associated with the Taíno people’s religious pantheon. The Taíno were a historic indigenous population who lived in the Caribbean region until the mid-sixteenth century when, owing to enslavement, starvation, and diseases brought by the Spanish, they largely died out. Mendieta, who had for several years been visiting pre-Columbian sites, developed an interest in the Taíno and saw their extinction as emblematic of a “deculturation” that was still occurring and with which she identified (A. Mendieta quoted in B. Clearwater, ed., Ana Mendieta: A Book of Works, Miami Beach, 1993, p. 17). Through her art practice, Mendieta sought to grapple with this sense of cultural disconnection broadly, and the Esculturas Rupestres allowed her to forge a physical link with her heritage.