Performing the self
Mendieta enrolled in painting studies at the University of Iowa which shaped her future studies and her art. Mendieta was able to perform for Hans Breder who used women students as performers for his body sculptures treating the bodies as objects.. This provided the frame for Mendieta's own projects after abandoning painting in 1972. Mendieta started her work with mimicking other identities with her own identity such as becoming a male through the appliance of facial hair. Later Mendieta began doing super-8 films which were repetition of simple gestures completed in everyday life. Also from a series in 1972 when Mendieta focused on the subjection of the body to physical stress she pressed a piece of glass against her nude body and face to cause distortion and show brute force.
The scene of a crime
During November 1972 to late 1973 Mendieta began to use blood and focus on the controversial subject of rape that followed an incident with an Iowa University student who was raped and murdered. The piece involved her on a table nude and covered in blood with a door slightly open for her fellow students to witness the piece as it was Mendieta's personal response to the incident. Later in 1973 Mendieta began doing more works involving crime scenes that could demand witness and participation by onlookers. With this Mendieta made a connection between art and crime. In an interview she stated that art was her salvation from becoming a criminal due to the anger she felt growing up as an orphan.
Sacrificial Violence
In the summer of 1973 Mendieta began to read Octavio Paz's book on Mexican culture which inspired more ideas in her which involved Paz's theme of sacrifice and relation between man and nature. Mendieta inserted Paz' comments directly into her artistic statements. Such as her work in Oaxaca, Mexico working with animal blood covering her body or laying white flowers and roots on herself to give the impression they are growing from her.
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The Sacred Imprint
Between late 1973 and February 1974 Mendieta began working with film and blood again with "Blood Writing" as she uses her body to create silhouettes and impressions. Thus emphasizing on the work of a woman's body as an instrument and production of art itself. Thus gaining a fascination with the idea of symbolic relation between eroticism and death. Mendieta continues with using her body to make symbolic suggestion with the use of blood, imprints, and silhouetting. Later piecing each one together to form a crime scene with a shrouding corpse.
Becoming other than oneself
Mendieta begins shifting her work by removing herself as the material object and working directly with the landscape. Such as her piece "Silueta de Yemaya" where she filmed a wooden raft with a white flower silhouette of herself flowing downstream to symbolize a wondering soul. This work was used to articulate the negative dialects of exile.
Ashes to Ashes
In 1975 kept working with the landscape while doing more film such as "Genesis Buried in Mud" where time passes a the Earth begins to move and reveal Mendieta herself to be buried and rises. Shifting toward the grave and burial focus as well as rebirth and death. Mendieta becomes a muse and her cultural displacement inscribes itself in her work.
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