Ana Mendieta
Further images
This work was another created by Mendieta through experimenting with video processing. Using a video camera set up on a tripod, the artist recorded herself standing naked and still in the Intermedia studio, wearing a large set of feathered wings. She then input the footage into a 16-channel video processor, which she used to assign vibrant colors to the light-reflecting objects within the image field. Over the course of the video, she assigned different colors to different levels of brightness. The resulting image is posterized, similar to Energy Charge, Source, and Yaagul, but unlike these other processed works, it displays a wide range of bright colors. Also, unlike these other works, Mendieta filmed the manipulated video off the monitor using a Super 8 camera. Because she did not use a 16mm camera that could film the video without the flickering, a band of light, known as a “shutter bar,” moves vertically across the image field. As there are twelve more frames in this video format (30 fps) than in Super 8 film (18 fps), the extra video frames distribute across the film frames as partial recordings and fragments. These flickering bars of light are brighter than the surrounding imagery because they are double exposures. Mendieta might have filmed the manipulated video in Super 8 rather than 16mm because she filmed six reels, five of which she spliced together to make Butterfly (2). Super 8 film was less expensive to obtain and process than 16mm.
Exhibitions
Rest/Energy: Photography, Video, and Sculpture by Ana Mendieta and Marina Abramovic, Galerie Lelong, New York, March 11 - April 24, 1999. (*Screened as part of a compilation.)Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Gallery, London, September 24, 2013 - December 15, 2013; Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, March 29, 2014 - July 6, 2014; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, October 2, 2014 - January 4, 2015.
Phantom Bodies; The Human Aura in Art, The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN October 23, 2015 – February 7, 2016; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, June 17 - September 11, 2016.
Ana Mendieta: Experimental and Interactive Films, Galerie Lelong, New York, February 5 - March 25, 2016.
24-Hour Drone: Experiments in Sound and Music, Second Ward Foundation, Hudson, New York, April 23 - April 24, 2016.
I SEE YOU, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, July 26, 2018-January 2019.
Between Now & Then: Life in the Bardos, Norwood Club, New York, NY, September 6, 2018 - August 30, 2019.
I slipped into my first metamorphosis so quietly tht no one noticed, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 12 - August 11, 2019.
Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Gallery, London, September 24, 2013 - December 15, 2013; Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, March 29, 2014 - July 6, 2014.
All of Them Witches, Deitch Inc., Los Angeles, February 8 - April 11, 2020.
Beyond Frida - Contemporary Art, Fashion, and Music, Drents Museum, Assen, The Netherlands, October 11, 2020 - March 28, 2021.
Elemental, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, November 3, 2022- February 19, 2023.
Action, Gesture, Performance: Feminism, the Body and Abstraction, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 17 January - 21 May, 2023.
Action, Gesture, Painting, Women in Abstraction, A Mondial History (1940-1970), Fondation Vicent van Gogh, Arles, June 3 - October 22, 2023.
Ana Mendieta Silhueta em Fogo (Ana Mendieta: Silueta en Fuego), SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, September 19, 2023 - January 21, 2024.
Masterful Attention Seekers, Busan Museum of Contemporary Art (Busan MoCA), Korea, March 15 – July 7, 2024.
Projections #16: Blood, fire, feathers. The films of Ana Mendieta, screeining at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, September 21, 2024.
Corps et Ames [Body and Soul], Pinault Foundation, La Bourse de Commerce, Paris, March 5 - August 25, 2025.