Installations
From the 8th of September to the 24th of November, Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana presented a comprehensive programme featuring installations, archives and performances by the participants of the edition.
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Ocean Bird (Washup)
- TypeInstallation
- ParticipantAna Mendieta
- VenueCasa Gomis
Ocean Bird (Washup), 1974 © Ana Mendieta. Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana / Ivan Erofeev
The seminal Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta’s body of work is concerned with the female body, particularly her own in the Silueta Series. The body is not only one of her main subjects, but also the primary tool of her practice. Her personal history begins with her exile from Cuba at an early age, as she was one of 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors sent to the United States as part of Operation Peter Pan. This history informed her lifelong inquiries into identity and quest for a space of belonging. Performative from the outset, Mendieta inserts her body, or its traces, in different natural situations or scenarios, in happenings that seem to have no beginning or end. In Ocean Bird (Washup), Mendieta’s naked body covered with white feathers is violently tossed by the waves in what could be read as a ritual or sacrifice charged by anguish. What being is this? How far did it travel and where to? Who will save it? Is the ocean caring for it, curing the body and – fulfilling a dream of many Cubans in exile – bringing it home? What other beings have washed ashore in Casa Gomis?
1974
Super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, colour, silent, 4’30’’
Courtesy of The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC and Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
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