Codes and symbols play a significant role in the analysis of this performance. Mendieta invited a group of friends over to her apartment in Iowa City for a small party they had no idea, of this re-enactment of a rape scene, un-titled. The work (to shock, illustrate trauma and bring awareness to rape) was made in response to a brutal rape and murder of a nursing student at Iowa university by another student at the same university in 1973. Mendieta celebrates her feminism and her identity of womanhood and the symbolism in her works like her Silueta series 1973-1977, this rape scene re-enactment was sparsely documented via photos. What I find compelling is Mendieta was not publicizing her work it was only after her death that she became noticed, and today is held up as a major contributor to contemporary art. Today as back in 1973, brutal rape and murders in Melbourne to vulnerable unsuspecting women just going about there daily life brings trauma not just to the victim but to those loved ones, co-workers, fellow students, and friends. Recent cases that brought our city to a standstill, while we paid tribute to the innocent include, but do not limit, are Jill Maher (2012) Eurydice Dixon (2018). As a protest Melbournians staged silent protest via a mass march down Sydney rd Brunswick, and a twilight candle vidual at Princess Park. Both silent protest were documented extensively, in the daily newspapers, television, and the internet, creating a symbol of awareness. So the power of art lives on in Ana mendieta’s one women protest.
Finkelstein in her Thesis Ana Mendieta A Search For identity characterises Mendieta’s Silueta Series as a symbol of the artist connecting with the earth, sublimely talking about her cultural Cuban loss of identity being an American Cuban and her spiritual connection with Christ.
Added 13 August 2020: I come back to thinking about Joseph Beuys his Fat Chair. 1963 and Tallow. 1977 using fat as a symbol of the body, and with Tallow he poured fat down a pedestrian underpass in the city of Munster Germany, the logic was that people sleep in the underpass therefore the molding fat represents a fragment motif of the body. Beuys life was art, everything he said and did and drew was about being an advocate for art. As quoted in Refiguring the Spiritual, p. 20 “When Beuys finally broke with the movement, the reason he offered was that Fluxus had no program for effecting real change in the world” I see Beuys like Mendieta creating there own vision making political statements via there artistic endeavours, both have contributed major influences today on how we interpret contemporary art. Today 13 August 2020 on my walk I laid down huddled on the ground next to the Yarra river making my own Silueta, my own body of fat, recorded as a self portrait, not an artist statement, yet the intentions comes from my readings of these two artist.
Finkelstein, Stephanie Lynne. "Ana Mendieta: A Search for Identity." Order No. 1512709, University of Missouri - Kansas City, 2012.
Taylor Mark. “Refiguring the Spiritual.” University- Columbia Press 2012