Screening: Ana Mendieta and Whispering Cave

“I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette). I believe this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during my adolescence. I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe.” – Ana Mendieta, 1981

The same year she wrote these words, Mendieta made art for the first time in her home country. There, she began the series Esculturas Rupestres, carving stylized female figures named after Taíno goddesses into the soft limestone walls of the caves of Jaruco National Park and documenting her work in still and moving images. Although these earth/body sculptures were long thought to be destroyed, the artist’s niece, filmmaker Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, embarked on a journey years later to discover whether any trace of them remained.

For this program, Ana Mendieta’s Esculturas Rupestres film (1981) is paired with Raquel Cecilia Mendieta’s Whispering Cave (2018), a documentary chronicling the younger artist’s dedicated research and mission to locate her aunt’s “lost” works.

Groundswell: Women of Land Art is made possible by leading support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation, and the Jean Baptiste “Tad” Adoue, III Fund of The Dallas Foundation. Generous support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Additional support is provided by Joanne Bober, Humanities Texas, Ann and Chris Mahowald, Leigh Rinearson, the Dallas Tourism Public Improvement District (DTPID), and Susan Inglett.