American Art Collaborative

This photograph documents one of the last of the siluetas, or "silhouettes," Mendieta created on an expedition into the eroded streambeds of Iowa. Her earth art borrowed from Catholicism, Caribbean santeriá, and pre-columbian rituals to make images of healing and eternal life-forces. She etched into the exposed earth a primal figure of a woman, giving a literal truth to the santeriá idea of monte adentro, or "going back to the roots." She chose this spot to suggest an ancient devotional gesture newly revealed by nature's cycles.

Mendieta used wooden effigies, silhouettes cut into the earth, and often her own body half-buried in the soil to forge a unity between herself and the land. She was the daughter of an early supporter of Fidel Castro who had fallen out of favor and been imprisoned. Her family fled Cuba for the United States in 1961, and the siluetas address Mendieta's feelings of loss and exile.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006