Covered in Time and History

Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the postwar era. During her too-brief career, she produced a distinctive body of work that includes drawings, installations, performances, photographs, and sculptures. Less well known is her remarkable and prolific production of films. This richly illustrated catalogue presents a series of sequential color stills from each of twenty-one original Super 8 films that have been newly preserved and digitized in high definition for the 2015 exhibition, combined with related photographs, and reference still images from all of the artist's 104 filmworks; together these illustrations sample the full range of the artist's film practice from 1971 to 1981.

Auteur
Howard Oransky is Director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota. There he has coorganized the exhibitions Lynn Hershman Leeson: Investigations (2011), Sacred Space, Contested Terrain (2012), and The House We Built: Feminist Art Then and Now (2013). Oransky previously served as Director of Continuing Education at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Director of Planning at the Walker Art Center.

Texte du rabat

This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta, organized by Lynn Lukkas and Howard Oransky for the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota.

Résumé
Born to a prominent family in Havana but exiled to the United States as a girl, Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the postwar era. During her too-brief career, she produced a distinctive body of work that includes drawings, installations, performances, photographs, and sculptures. Less well known is her remarkable and prolific production of films. This richly illustrated catalogue presents a series of sequential color stills from each of twenty-one original Super 8 films that have been newly preserved and digitized in high definition for the 2015 exhibition, combined with related photographs, and reference still images from all of the artist’s 104 filmworks; together these illustrations sample the full range of the artist’s film practice from 1971 to 1981. The book includes Mendieta’s first published comprehensive filmography resulting from three years of collaborative research conducted by the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection and the University of Minnesota as well as original essays by John Perreault, Michael Rush, Rachel Weiss, Lynn Lukkas, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, and Laura Wertheim Joseph. The first book-length treatment of Mendieta’s moving-image practice, Covered in Time and History aims to locate her films centrally within her larger oeuvre and at the forefront of the multidisciplinary shifts that characterized visual arts practice during the 1970s.

Published in association with the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota.

Exhibition dates:
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): November 9, 2016–February 12, 2017
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdate: February 28–July 3, 2016
Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota: September 15–December 12, 2015

Contenu
Foreword
Howard Oransky

Eros, Death, and Life: The Films of Ana Mendieta
Michael Rush

Ana Mendieta: The Politics of Spirituality
John Perreault

Difficult Times: Watching Mendieta’s Films
Rachel Weiss

Forever Young: Five Lessons from the Creative Life of Ana Mendieta
Lynn Lukkas

Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta
Howard Oransky

Uncovering Ana: The Rebirth of Mendieta’s Filmworks
Raquel Cecilia Mendieta

Unfinished Processes: Going Back and Reeling Forward in Ana Mendieta’s Films
Laura Wertheim Joseph

Filmography
Laura Wertheim Joseph

Exhibition Checklist
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Photography Credits
Index