Cuban Artist Ana Mendieta’s Household Fights to Inform Her Story

It was a night in late January, and Raquel Mendieta was eating on the Parador, the Twelfth-century monastery-turned-hotel the place she was staying whereas she put in paintings for a brand new survey of Ana Mendieta, the well-known Cuban-born efficiency artist — and Ms. Mendieta’s maternal aunt — at a close-by museum.
It had been an extended day of assembling logs, soil, pine cones and branches right into a reimagining of the artist’s “Untitled: Silueta Collection” contained in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, and her dinner companions — her 15-year-old daughter, Anabella, and Grace Hong, the assistant director at Galerie Lelong, which represents the Ana Mendieta property — have been nonetheless jet-lagged after touring from New York.
However they jumped when, after plates of bacalao and glasses of white wine had been cleared, Ms. Mendieta checked her telephone and exclaimed, “Oh my god!”
She lined her face together with her fingers for a second, after which delivered the information: Carl Andre had died.
Mr. Andre, Ana Mendieta’s husband, was the one who referred to as 911 within the early hours of Sept. 8, 1985, when she fell from the Thirty fourth-floor house they shared in Greenwich Village. He was charged with — and later acquitted of — her homicide in a case that grew to become one of many largest artwork world scandals of the final 50 years. Although a choose dominated that Mr. Andre was not responsible and plenty of distinguished artists got here to his protection, Ana Mendieta had equally vehement supporters, together with her household, who believed Mr. Andre was chargeable for her dying.
Lately, the story has been revisited by writers and filmmakers in a wave of media initiatives that has vexed Ms. Mendieta, the administrator of her aunt’s property — significantly when the works seem to deal with the dying.
“Not solely are we compelled to relive her dying again and again, however we now have no say in how she is being portrayed,” Ms. Mendieta, 55, mentioned.
On listening to the information about Mr. Andre, she mentioned that earlier than any emotions of closure or grief, her ideas had gone to a well-recognized place: Would extra folks resurface the story of her aunt’s dying now, too?
“What number of occasions does she should fall?” she requested.
‘Not only a piece of I.P.’
When well-known artists die, their work — who owns it and has a proper to it — can change into the topic of household feuds and fierce court docket battles. When Robert Indiana, the artist finest recognized for his “LOVE” sculpture, died in 2018, he left behind an property price an estimated $28 million and a signature model that grew to become the centerpiece of a federal lawsuit when two of his shut associates have been accused of brokering agreements to make use of his iconic design for works that spelled BRAT and WINE. And the artwork world didn’t quickly neglect the dispute over Mark Rothko’s property, a authorized struggle that stretched over 15 years.
However the struggle over Ana Mendieta’s legacy is extra about her biography than her bodily archive. Ms. Mendieta could also be working the property, which decides how her artwork is offered in museum and gallery settings, however as varied narrative initiatives attain the general public, she is studying how little energy she has to dictate how her aunt’s story is advised, and by whom.
These days, the Ana Mendieta property is worried about two new initiatives. An adaptation of “Bare by the Window,” the 1990 cult e-book by Robert Katz detailing the years previous the artist’s dying and the homicide trial that adopted, is in improvement at Amazon MGM Studios, with America Ferrera as the chief producer. And this month, Xochitl Gonzalez will publish “Anita de Monte Laughs Final,” a novel that follows an artwork historical past pupil who feels an uncanny connection to a Cuban efficiency artist named Anita who fell 33 tales from her New York Metropolis house in 1985.
Studying an advance copy of the e-book final fall, Ms. Mendieta seen that a number of particulars in Anita de Monte’s again story appeared to correspond together with her aunt’s. The likeness was so profound, she mentioned, that the “line between truth and fiction” was blurred.
Ms. Gonzalez, who’s of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent, mentioned she felt as if she shared a “cultural lineage” with Ana Mendieta when she found her work as an artwork pupil at Brown College within the Nineties. Her character Anita was meant to be a homage to the artist, she mentioned, not a direct analogue: After Anita falls within the e-book, she turns right into a bat.
Ms. Mendieta protested the notion that her aunt was “forgotten” within the ’90s, a characterization of the fictional Anita de Monte included within the e-book’s advertising supplies. And she or he was pissed off that Ms. Gonzalez had not contacted the property earlier than writing, after which promoting, her novel.
Whereas Ms. Ferrera’s group had reached out to the property, Ms. Mendieta mentioned, “they have been unwilling to offer me and my household a big voice in how Ana’s story could be advised.” (A consultant for Ms. Ferrera didn’t return requests for remark.)
Ms. Mendieta says the property is open to collaborations, however she desires a seat on the desk. “I wish to be concerned in each means I can, as a result of that’s the one means I may be part of the narrative and make it possible for I’m defending her story,” she mentioned.
Legally, writers and filmmakers can’t use any reproductions of the artist’s work with out permission from her property. A couple of years in the past, the Ana Mendieta property made headlines for suing Amazon Studios over the director Luca Guadagnino’s use of the artist’s imagery in his horror movie remake “Suspiria.” (Amazon settled the go well with.)
However past that, creators are usually not required by regulation to seek the advice of Ms. Mendieta. “There’s no obligation on the a part of moviemaking to get an property’s permission,” mentioned Edward Klaris, managing companion at Klaris Regulation and an adjunct professor of media regulation at Columbia Regulation College.
What’s extra, standard knowledge in Hollywood says that biopics and documentaries that contain relations too straight can verge on hagiography. When Griffin Dunne produced a documentary about Joan Didion, his aunt, the New Yorker critic Richard Brody mentioned it was “nearer to an official portrait than an illuminating biography.”
However Ms. Mendieta shouldn’t be the one one who argues there could also be an moral crucial to securing the property’s blessing for works based mostly on Ana Mendieta’s life story.
“This can be a household legacy,” mentioned Gary Foster, a veteran producer whose credit embrace “Sleepless in Seattle” and who has an in depth skilled relationship with Ms. Mendieta. “It’s not only a piece of I.P.”
Talking usually, Mr. Klaris urged that the fictionalization of true occasions might form a public narrative — although once more, it’s utterly authorized, he mentioned. He added: “Will it change historical past? Will folks assume that the whole lot that was mentioned within the film was true, when actually, quite a lot of it was made up?
“Maybe. Very doubtless.”
An artist and her public
Ana Mendieta was born in Havana in 1948 and moved to the US when she was 12, with the assistance of a program to evacuate Cuban youngsters within the early days of the Castro regime. As a youngster, she lived in an orphanage and moved round foster houses in Iowa.
She studied portray on the College of Iowa, the place she immersed herself within the cutting-edge Intermedia Program, which might fly out avant-garde artists like Vito Acconci and Hans Haacke from New York for lectures and performances. When Ana moved to Manhattan in 1978, she had an instantaneous group.
“Seeing her in New York was at all times a pleasure as a result of she at all times had mates round her,” mentioned her longtime pal Sherry Buckberrough, 79, an artist and a retired artwork historical past professor. “She networked very effectively, so there was at all times some occasion that we’d go to. And there would at all times be a celebration later, that’s for certain.”
Ana met Carl Andre in 1979 throughout a panel on the A.I.R. Gallery, the place her work was on show. They’d a stormy relationship, however they married in January 1985 and honeymooned down the Nile River that summer season. She died three months later.
Her life, and profession, had been minimize quick. However she had already change into well-known for her movies, ground items and images of “siluetas,” the human types she inserted into nature or carved from the earth. In probably the most well-known silueta, “Imagen de Yagul,” the artist lies nude in a Zapotec tomb with a thicket of white flowers sprouting from her physique. She had additionally collected an array of formidable accolades, together with a Guggenheim Basis Fellowship and acquisitions by the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork.
The curator Helen Molesworth mentioned that individuals returned to Ana Mendieta’s story not due to her dying however due to her work, which she argued was extra related than ever for its exploration of humankind’s relationship to the pure world.
“I’m afraid it will sound crass,” Ms. Molesworth mentioned, however “if Ana wasn’t an incredible artist, folks wouldn’t be taking note of the story.”
Up for interpretation
Ms. Molesworth might have helped spur the latest surge in public curiosity in Ana. She interacted with the property when, in 2022, she hosted the podcast “Loss of life of an Artist” to huge recognition — it at the moment has 1.6 million downloads, in line with Pushkin Industries.
She mentioned the audio manufacturing firm had approached her to ask if she was desirous about creating a present about Ana Mendieta’s dying, drawing on the model of in style true crime podcasts. However with restricted entry to police data and individuals who have been near the story, Ms. Molesworth as a substitute got down to produce one thing extra “essayistic about tradition on the whole,” she mentioned.
Ms. Molesworth approached the property concerning the venture. However after greater than a yr of conversations, the property declined to take part as a result of Ms. Mendieta mentioned she had frightened about how the podcast would deal with her aunt’s dying and Ms. Molesworth wouldn’t present her with ample particulars about her strategy.
“We open and shut the podcast with very thick descriptions of Ana’s work,” Ms. Molesworth mentioned. “We tried to root the podcast within the significance of Mendieta’s oeuvre.”
She sees a sure futility within the property’s efforts to maintain a decent grip on Ana Mendieta’s legacy. Because the artist continues her ascent to icon standing, Ms. Mendieta might have to regulate to a actuality during which she shares her aunt’s story with an unlimited base of writers, filmmakers and followers who might interpret her work — and her life — how they need.
“I don’t assume estates can ever management how tales are advised,” Ms. Molesworth mentioned. “I’m a Duchampian. The viewer completes the work.”
After information of Mr. Andre’s dying unfold that night in January, Ana Mendieta tributes flooded social media. In a submit on X, the writer R.O. Kwon wrote that she would stare at her “superb artwork” whereas writing her forthcoming novel “Exhibit.” She additionally remembered shopping for a long-coveted copy of an exhibition catalog on the night time of the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021.
“I wanted some sort of firm,” Ms. Kwon mentioned. “Realizing how she died, and the anger round that, I’m certain that additionally was a part of why I reached for her in that specific second.”
Myriam Gurba, who wrote about Ana Mendieta in her memoir “Imply,” about coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana, mentioned she had seemed to the artist’s silueta pictures “as inspiration for survival” when she was experiencing home violence.
“There’s a group of individuals on this planet who respect and love Ana and her artwork,” mentioned Ms. Mendieta, “and I do know she would admire this immensely, as a result of her life was all concerning the work and wanting folks to work together with it.”
A household’s inheritance
On the eve of the exhibition opening in León, Ms. Mendieta and her daughter, Anabella, organized black candles right into a silhouette on the ground.
Ms. Mendieta checked the location in opposition to a reference photograph for the piece “Ñáñigo Burial,” which Ana Mendieta initially put in for her first group present in New York. After Ms. Mendieta’s mom, Raquelín, began recreating the piece in 1990, the candle lighting grew to become a pre-opening custom.
A lighter made its technique to the museum director, the foreman, to the fabricator, to the gallerist. When a single candle remained, Ms. Mendieta and Anabella lit it collectively.
Doing this work isn’t a matter of household obligation for Ms. Mendieta. Her aunt was additionally her godmother and the one who inspired her to nurture her personal creativity. The artist was her first-grade artwork instructor when the household lived in Iowa and she or he taught on the close by public faculty. Years later, when Ms. Mendieta was on the point of apply to varsity, her aunt sat down together with her and went over the professionals and cons of various faculties. The artist died not lengthy after, when Ms. Mendieta was 17.
Earlier than she grew to become the administrator of the property in 2013, Ms. Mendieta mentioned, she was in a position to go days or even weeks with out fascinated about her aunt’s dying. Now, it’s at all times together with her.
“Even in case you’re not fascinated about it, it’s nonetheless a part of who you’re,” Ms. Mendieta mentioned. “I imply, it’s a part of my daughter. It’s a part of your complete household.”
As a filmmaker herself, Ms. Mendieta has her personal aspirations of adapting her aunt’s story for a film. In September 2022, she shared a screenplay with Mr. Foster, the Hollywood producer, and so they have been discussing actors they wish to solid to play Ana Mendieta. She additionally has a documentary within the works.
Ms. Mendieta believes her aunt would have welcomed all the curiosity. Throughout her lifetime, she advised folks she would finally be “larger than Frida,” who was beginning to change into higher recognized in the US and would later, after a biography and biopic, rise to the extent of a world feminist image.
Her aunt saved each sketch, each pocket book, each receipt, as a result of she imagined that sooner or later, there may be an Ana Mendieta museum.
“That’s the factor,” Ms. Mendieta mentioned. “Ana wished all of it.”