Photo Etchings of The Rupestrian Sculptures
As documented in the book Ana Mendieta: A Book of Works, edited by Bonnie Clearwater, before her death, Ana Mendieta was working on a series of photo-etchings of cave sculptures she had created at Escaleras de Jaruco, Jaruco State Park in Havana, Cuba (Clearwater 1993, p. 11). Her sculptures were entitled "Rupestrian Sculptures" and the book of photographic etchings that Mendieta was creating to preserve these sculptures is a testament to the intertextuality of Mendieta's work. Clearwater explains how the photographs of Mendieta's sculptures were often as important as the piece they were documenting because the nature of Mendieta's work was so impermanent. Mendieta spent as much time and thought on the creation of the photographs as she did on the sculptures themselves (Clearwater 1993, p. 11).
Mendieta returned to Havana, Cuba, the place of her birth birth for this project, but she was still exploring her sense of displacement and loss, according to Clearwater (Clearwater 1993, p. 18). The "Rupestrian Sculptures" that Mendieta created were also influenced by the Tainan people, "native inhabitants of the pre-hispanic Antilles," which Mendieta became fascinated by and studied (Clearwater 1993, p. 12).
Mendieta had completed five photo-etchings of the "Rupestrian Sculptures" before she died in 1985. The book Ana Mendieta: A Book of Works, published in 1993, contains both photographs of the sculptures as well as Mendieta's notes on the project (Clearwater 1993, p. 20).
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“All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.”
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