Abstract
Existential space is lived space, space permeated by our raced, gendered selves. It is representative of our very existence. The purpose of this essay is to explore the intersection between this lived space and art by analyzing the work of the Cuban‐born artist Ana Mendieta and showing how her Siluetas Series discloses a space of exile. The first section discusses existential spatiality as explained by the phenomenologists Heidegger and Watsuji and as represented in Mendieta's Siluetas. The second section analyzes the space of exile as a space of in‐between‐ness and borders. Lastly, the third section discusses temporality as it relates to the space of exile. Through the analysis of Mendieta's Siluetas, and in light of phenomenological accounts of space and the works of Anzaldúa and Mignolo, Ana Mendieta herself is disclosed as well as the space characteristic of those who can no longer be said to have a “home.”
My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence. The making of my Silueta in nature keeps (makes) the transition between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.Footnote1
Ana Mendieta
Living in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create.Footnote2
Gloria Anzaldúa
Notes
As quoted in Gloria Moure, Ana Mendieta (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, S.A., 1996), 108.
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands La Frontera, The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 73.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1962), Sections 22–24.
Tetsuro Watsuji, Climate and Culture, A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (New York: Greenwood Press, 1961), 9. See also Tetsuro Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsuro's Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan, trans. Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), Chap. 9. Watsuji distinguishes between climate and environment. He sees climate not as equivalent to natural environment but rather as an element of the structure of human existence.
I do not wish to claim that Mendieta's work is solely driven by the nostalgia characteristic of the exile, a nostalgia which many times longs for a fixed positionality. See Irit Rogoff, “The Discourse of Exile, Geographies and Representations of Identity,” Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts, July (1989): 72, where she claims that “There is little nostalgia or illusion about the recuperation of previous cultural coherencies in any aspect of Mendieta's work.” I think that nostalgia does play a role in Mendieta's artworks in the sense that it is part of her life and consequently informs her creativity. It is a different issue whether the actual work produced points to a final, acquired destination that can finally provide comfort.
“Nepantla” is a Nahuatl word meaning “place in the middle,” or “in‐between,” space.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands and Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Heidegger, Being and Time, 139[105].
Recall Heidegger's insistence that being‐in‐the‐world has to do with a non‐thematic awareness of the world. In other words, Heidegger describes our relationship to the world in terms of our non‐reflective understanding of the world. He does not deny that we also have reflective understanding, but he sees this latter understanding as dependent on our day‐to‐day non‐reflective understanding. See Heidegger, Being and Time, Sections 12–13.
Heidegger, Being and Time, 79[54].
Heidegger, Being and Time, 146[111].
Recall that Heidegger sees all existentialia or existential characteristics as “equiprimordial” or having the same importance, with the exception of temporality. See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, 375[327], where he states that “The primordial unity of the structure of care lies in temporality.”
Watsuji, Climate and Culture, 13.
“Peter‐Pan kids” refers to the children from the 1960s “Pedro Pan Operación” in which almost 14,000 Cuban children were sent from Cuba to foster homes in the US in order to protect them from being socialized by Castro's system and from the imminent war (Bay of Pigs Invasion). Ana and her sister, Raquel, were sent to Iowa in 1961. For an interesting discussion of issues of racism related to Mendieta's move to Iowa and issues of the significance of “earth” in Mendieta's work see Jane Blocker, Where is Ana Mendieta?, Identity, Performativity, and Exile (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), Chapter 2.
Anne Raine, “Embodied Geographies: Subjectivity and Materiality in the Work of Ana Mendieta,” in Generations & Geographies in the Visual Arts, Feminist Readings, ed. Griselda Pollock (London: Routledge, 1996), 239.
This is an important observation when considering how well Heideggerian phenomenology does or does not explain the lived experiences of beings who are multicultural. It suggests that certain revisions need to be made to the Heideggerian account given the experiences of these selves. I discuss this issue in more detail in “‘New Mestizas,’ ‘World‐travelers,’ and ‘Dasein’: Phenomenology and the Multi‐Voiced, Multi‐cultural Self,” Hypatia, 16, no. 3 (2001): 1–29.
John Perrault, “Earth and Fire,” in Ana Mendieta, A Retrospective, guest curators, Petra Barreras del Rio and John Perreault (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987), 14.
Blocker, Where's Ana Mendieta?, 27.
See Raine, “Embodied Geographies,” 236 and Blocker, Where's Ana Mendieta?, Chap. 3.
See Blocker's interesting discussion about how Mendieta's art works make a connection between earth and nation even though these are supposed to be opposed categories in Blocker, Where's Ana Mendieta?, 48.
For a Freudian interpretation of the “uncanny” see Blocker, Where's Ana Mendieta?, 75.
Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, and Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 43–49.
Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 47.
Blocker, Where's Ana Mendieta?, 73.
Rogoff, “The Discourse of Exile,” 73.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 78.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 49.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 46.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 22.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 80.
Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 73.
See Watsuji, Climate and Culture, Chaps. 2 & 3, in which he discusses the characters of human beings that inhabit monsoon, desert, and meadow climates, and ultimately essentializes the relationship between character and climate and is subsequently led to affirm the “uniqueness” of the Japanese character.
Watsuji, Climate and Culture, 205.
Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, 85. In this text Mignolo also considers what he calls “double critique” and “Creolization” as border thinking, as theorized by the Moroccan philosopher Abdelhebir Khatibi and the Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant respectively.
I should add here that even Anzaldúa herself may be guilty of romanticizing the new mestiza and the elements that are supposed to be part of her heritage. For example, Anzaldúa's use of Indian mythology is at times indicative of this stance. While it may be that some Chicanos who find themselves in the borderlands feel a connection with their Indian heritage, many might not—in fact, many may feel completely unconnected to it and may not be able to forge a connection. This may also be the case for Latinos who recognize the importance of her account of the new mestiza and who feel that she is capturing their own experience. See Benjamin Alire Saenz, “In the Borderlands of Chicano Identity,” in Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics, eds Scott Michaelsen and David E. Johnson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). See also Debra Castillo and María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba, Border Women, Writing from la frontera (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). In the introduction to this text, Castillo and Tabuenca Córdoba criticize both Anzaldúa and Mignolo for providing explanations of the borders that are too theoretical and that consequently leave behind the real people of the borders, thus creating merely a “floating signifier for a displaced self” (35).
Moure, Ana Mendieta, 101. An important element of Mendieta's work connected to her Cuban heritage which I do not discuss here, is her use of Santería. For an analysis of Santería in the Siluetas, see Mary Jane Jacob, Ana Mendieta The Silueta Series, 1973–1980 (New York: Galerie Lelong, 1991).
Watsuji, Climate and Culture, 9–10.
One can see footage of this video in the 1987 film “Ana Mendieta, Fuego de Tierra” by Kate Horsfield, Nereyda Garcia‐Ferraz, and Branda Miller.
Moure, Ana Mendieta, 163.
Mendieta died in 1985. Her husband, the well‐known artist Carl Andre, was tried for her death and acquitted. More commentators have discussed Mendieta's work after her tragic death, and, unfortunately, as Coco Fusco points out, many “invoked her name as a metaphor for female victimization, transforming her into a contemporary New York vision of Frida Kahlo.” See Coco Fusco, “Displacement: Traces of Ana Mendieta,” Poliester, 4 (1992): 61. However, Mendieta's work should be appreciated in its own right, not just for its connection with a tragic event. For a discussion of Mendieta's death and her relationship with Andre, see Robert Katz, Naked by the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990).
Heidegger, Being and Time, 374[326].