Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints – Face),

1972

During a documented performance in 1972, Mendieta photographed herself pressing a pane of glass against her face and her naked body to complete a series of thirty-six color slides. She later converted thirteen slides of her face into black-and-white photographs, including these two. The hauntingly close view of Mendieta’s deformed features conveys a sense of alienation and challenges the viewer to decipher her altered facial attributes. The series was among Mendieta’s earliest experiments with body art, and the works affirm her control as an artist as much as they decry the violent pressure and resulting discomfort inflicted upon the protagonist. In her strikingly modern reinterpretation of the grotesque, Mendieta embraced the disquieting force of deformity as a commentary against the societal biases she had experienced as a Cuban American female artist.