Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Alex Dippold, Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No. 6   November 1, 1999

Performance Artist's Works to Be Screened A video screening of selected works by performance artist Ana Mendieta will be presented in the Handwerker Gallery on Thursday, November 11, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The screening features a 33-minute video documenting the artist’s body-based performances and landscape sculpture. The video, which consists of black-and- white and color segments, will run continuously. The event, the third presentation in the Handwerker’s Global Video series, is free and open to the public. "As part of the Handwerker’s ongoing commitment to contemporary art, we believe it is our to what is arguably the most interesting and innovative artistic medium today — video art production," says Jelena Stojanovic, assistant professor of art history and Handwerker director. Born in Cuba in 1948, Mendieta left that country in 1961, just before the outbreak of the Cuban revolution. Much of her work expresses the pain of cultural displacement and resonates with metaphors of death, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. In 1972 Mendieta began expressing her central themes of burial and regeneration through ritualistic performances and earthworks. Whether painting herself with blood or burning, carving, and inscribing female symbols into the landscape, as in her "Silueta"series, Mendieta infused her work with power and poetry. "I have been carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette)," she wrote. "I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). Through my earth/body sculptures I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body." Following her death in 1985, retrospective exhibitions of Mendieta’s work were organized by the Pat Hearn Gallery in New York; the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; and the Helsinki City Art Museum. Her work has been displayed throughout the world, including exhibitions at the Bronx Museum, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Museu de Arte Contemporãnea in São Paolo, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, and Primo Piano in Rome. For more information call the gallery at 274-3018 or contact Stojanovic at 274-3548.