Ana Mendieta

March 17, 2025

Living in the age of convenience

taiwanese grass jelly herb (3.1/5) (cooling, bitter mint sensation that feels light but has an intense climate. apparently, when steeped with agar agar or gelatin, it can thicken into a jelly. however, i would prefer to drink the herb as is.) "And surely you have seen, in the darkness of the most innermost rooms of these huge buildings, to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold lead of a sliding door or screen will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light cast into the enveloping darkness. How in such a dark place, gold draws so much light to itself is a mystery to me. Modern man, in his well-lit house, knows nothing of the beauty of gold, but those who lived in the dark houses of the past were not merely captivated by its beauty, they also knew its practical value, for gold in these dim rooms, must have served the function of a reflector. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty." Tanizaki'...

i also made a video essay about her in more extensive detail on my Youtube channel: Shannon Kim so go check it out if u find this interesting!!!!! i spent a lot of time on it lol◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜

Ana Mendieta has become a symbol of the sexism and seedy injustices of the art world—and the groundbreaking nature of her work is frequently overshadowed by that history. Fusing art and life, Mendieta took risks, experimenting with performance and other unconventional mediums at a time when the market had no interest in them.

Her “earth-body” artworks famously used the natural world and her own body as powerful mediums of expression, interrogating humanity's relationship to the land and the cosmos. By placing the female body—the outline of her body—back into the elements of earth, she utilized the emerging feminist theories of binding the personal to the political.