Untitled (Silueta Series, Iowa)

In her "Silueta" series, Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta explored her connection to land with body art and performance documented through photography. She began the series in 1973 and continued it until 1980. Many of these photos were taken in Iowa, where she lived as a refugee from the age of 12 into adulthood after her father joined anti-Castro groups. By drawing her body into the earth, Mendieta poses questions of belonging: as a woman, as an immigrant, and as an individual, within landscape and society. She explained in an interview in 1980, “I work with the earth, with nature, and I make sculptures out of the landscapes and the environment. I think this has much to do with Cuba, in the sense that I was attracted to nature, because I didn’t have a land, a Motherland.”