Abstract

In the Silueta series” (1973-1978), the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) inscribed her body in different landscapes, making 200 silhouettes in total. Through the examination of this work, as well as of the historical sources about Mendieta's life and the artistic processes related to her work, this article explores the ways in which the bodies' agency opens new forms of thinking the political. Following these approaches, the article shows that the potential of the political in Mendieta's work, emerges both in the granting of a historicity and a place to the female body, and in the way in which the images of the series operate as true events.