Between Presence and Absence: Temporality and the Deconstructed Representation of the Female Body in Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series
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2025-07-08
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en
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This thesis analyzes how the Silueta series (1973-1980) by feminist Cuban American artist
Ana Mendieta employed forms of temporality to subvert a stable representation of femininity
and the female body in art. In this series, Mendieta performed an imprinting of her body into
nature with several materials, creating a silhouette that remains in the natural environment.
After the performative part she photographed these silhouettes and disseminated the images of
it as “earth-body works”. To analyze the Silueta series’ subversion of a stable meaning as
attached to femininity and the female body, a close reading method is applied in this thesis,
while using feminist deconstructionist theories on gender and performance art. It was found
that gender performativity can be discovered in the series and that different forms of
temporality are used in the series to defer meaning as attached to femininity and the
representation of the female body.
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