An evening of art and film exploring key aspects of the artistic trajectory of Ana Mendieta (1948–1985). Internationally recognized, her visionary art touches on major 21st-century debates that center on the female body, the return to the earth, and the vagaries of migration and exile. Ecomythologies will be presented by Latin America scholar Adriana Méndez-Rodenas and Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, the artist’s niece and the administrator of her estate.
The presentation will feature two films by Raquel Cecilia: the documentaries Ana Mendieta, Nature Inside (8:23 min.), with narration by Ana Mendieta, highlighting her themes and meanings behind her work; and Whispering Cave (27 min.). inspired by the artist’s sculptures in the caves of Jaruco, Cuba in 1981. Thirty-six years later, her niece becomes convinced that the lost cave is a myth and she sets out on a journey to find it.
Each film will be followed by commentary and dialogue between the presenters, capped by a Q&A with the audience, moderated by Prof. Méndez-Rodenas.
This presentation is part of our CreateNYC Language Access Series on Cuban History, Art, and Literature. It will be held in English.
This event is part of Carnegie Hall’s Nuestros sonidos festival.
INSTITUTO CERVANTES
211 E 49th St, bet. 2nd & 3rd Aves., NYC
FREE ADMISSION
SPACE IS LIMITED
MAKE YOUR RESERVATION AT: https://shorturl.at/RZTJY
[Image above: Whispering Cave © Corazón Pictures, LLC.]
Raquel Cecilia is an independent filmmaker and writer best known for her recent films on her aunt, artist Ana
Mendieta. Her films have screened at film festivals, art museums and galleries world-wide. Raquel is also the Administrator of the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection and has published numerous essays about Ana Mendieta in art catalogues, most notably the essay on her experience overseeing the digital restoration of Mendieta’s moving image works on film and video in the catalogue Ana Mendieta: Covered in Time & History. She is currently working on a feature length documentary about the life and art of Ana Mendieta and was recently awarded a large grant from a philanthropic organization to help complete the film.
Adriana Méndez Rodenas is Professor Emerita of Latin American and Comparative Literatures at the University of Iowa. At the University of Missouri, she was past director of the Afro-Romance Institute and is now an emerita professor of Spanish. She has written amply on Cuban literature, including her signature book, Gender and Nationalism in Colonial Cuba: The Travels of Santa Cruz y Montalvo, Condesa de Merlin (1998). Her chapter on Merlin’s Colonial Havana appeared in The Palgrave Handbook of Transnational Women’s Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century (2023). Her latest article reinterprets Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda for The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature (2024). A specialist in travel writing, she resurrected the stories of Victorian “lady” travelers in Transatlantic Travels to Nineteenth Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims (2014). Among prestigious grants and awards, she received the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) and the Fulbright Distinguished Chair of American Studies at Uppsala University (2008-2009). Her dedication to the art of Ana Mendieta has resulted in lectures delivered at various universities and conferences.
This event is co-sponsored by Instituto Cervantes
And is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature.
With the promotional cooperation of Rialta, 14yMedio and Diario de Cuba
