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Blood Sign

A work made of single-channel video (transferred from super-8 film), color, silent; 4 min. 40 sec..

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  • A work made of single-channel video (transferred from super-8 film), color, silent; 4 min. 40 sec..

Date:

1974

Artist:

Ana Mendieta
American, born Cuba, 1948–1985

About this artwork

Emerging in the early 1970s amid new genres of land art, performance art, film and video, and feminist practices, artist Ana Mendieta developed a deeply personal, experimental, and largely ephemeral oeuvre consisting chiefly of performative actions that she described as “earth-body sculptures.” Born in Cuba, Mendieta came to the United States as a refugee in 1961 at the age of 12. The trauma of separation from her family, culture, and homeland became the bedrock of the artist’s practice, which was rooted in physical and spiritual connections between the body and the natural world. The Silueta series—hundreds of earth-body sculptures and their attendant photographs and films—constitutes the core of Mendieta’s project. Based initially on the artist’s own body and silhouette, the Siluetas developed into a panopoly of archetypal goddess figures and eventually more universal human forms. They also incorporated a unique blend of ritual effects drawn from diverse religious practices in much the same way as studio performances Untitled (Body Tracks) and Untitled (Blood Sign #1), in which she used animal blood. An intensely productive period of travel to Cuba, where Mendieta felt her practice was reconnected with its origins, promoted these and other drawings, etching, and sculptures in which, for the first, her iconic goddess forms became permanent individual objects.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Ana Mendieta

Title

Blood Sign

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1974

Medium

Single-channel video (transferred from Super-8 film), color, silent; 4 min. 40 sec.

Edition

1 of 6, plus 3 artist's proofs

Credit Line

Gift of Diane and Bruce Halle from the Thomarie Foundation

Reference Number

2012.690

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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