Untitled (leaf drawing)

Born in Havana, Mendieta was sent by her parents to the United States at the age of thirteen, two years after the Cuban Revolution. Much of her work was informed by this early experience of displacement as well as by the burgeoning feminist movement of the 1970s. Throughout her career, in performances as well as drawings, Mendieta investigated issues of identity, memory, and cultural history. In 1982, after returning from a trip to Cuba, she began to scratch or draw images of female forms that were reminiscent of ancient petroglyphs and fertility sculptures onto leaves and bark. As the drawing in this gallery demonstrates, an essential theme in all of Mendieta’s work is the relationship between the female body and the earth, both timeless sources of life.