Mendieta sought a momentary tableau comprising herself and nature, which she often described as “earth-body sculpture.” The “Silueta” series shows the residue of this tableau in the artist’s imprinted silhouette. In some images, this contour is clear and cartoon-like; in others, it is almost impossible to detect any imprint whatsoever. From the same series is the three-minute, silent film Coraźon de Roca con Sangre (“Rock Heart with Blood”) (1975). Here, Mendieta pours red paint into a premade silhouette before lowering her body, face down, into the indented earth, as if slipping back into a soil-made womb. She would later remark that the silhouettes “recall prehistoric beliefs of an omnipresent female force whose body parts made the earth a living creature.”  

Mendieta’s fascination with prehistory only intensified in the years that followed. After returning to Cuba in 1981, she made a series
of “Rupestrian sculptures:” small, shallow-relief carvings that referenced goddesses of the indigenous Taíno culture of Cuba. The “Rupestrian” figures really do resemble uncovered artifacts. In their verisimilitude, Mendieta imagines an alternative order in which the feminine body takes precedence. Etched into stone, their hips, breasts, and vulvic folds take on prehistoric sanctity, suggesting that the earth itself is female. In hindsight, there’s a naivete to Mendieta’s Mother-Earth feminism. Many have accused her of a singular and essentialist vision of Goddess in her earth-based works. In her defense, others have attributed the far more fashionable qualities of performativity and historical specificity
to her work. Yet, this debate clouds the artist’s deeper interest in the mutable and fleeting human trace, which reaches beyond essentialist or intersectional conceptions of the female body.

Mendieta practiced two forms of indentation, one nested within
the other. She made an initial physical imprint in nature but, importantly, she then captured this act with the camera. Ultimately, “Connecting to the Earth” was an exhibition of photographs and film. To think of these media as impoverished substitutes for Mendieta’s live work misses a crucial aspect of her practice. Like the silhouettes and carvings, photographs capture a gesture that no longer exists. The imprint of light upon a chemical surface is no different from the grooves of her body in the mud or the blackened outline in burnt grass. Further, both the physical and photographic traces were repetitive acts. The artist made over 100 “Siluetas” between 1973 and 1980; similarly, one negative can produce a multitude of prints. To consider documentation as secondary to the work overlooks the dual nature of trace in Mendieta’s practice.