The Poetic Act as an Act of Resistance in the Feminist Practice of Ana Mendieta
Journal
Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnography SASA 69 (2)
Date Issued
2021-09-24
Author(s)
Natali Rajčinovska Pavleska
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2298/GEI2102289P
Abstract
Between the potential to and the potential not to, according to Giorgio Agamben, there is a
process of a creative (poetic) act, as an act of resistance towards the end of one's own
completion, in this context analyzed through the work of feminist artist Ana Mendieta.
Regarding the (in)completeness, Mendieta’s oeuvre exemplifies a perfect illustration that the
disappearance of her art work is a way of communication that resists production of any
formal finality, as a process within which the traces of the media used (her own body) also
disappear because of the time and circumstances left to nature. The dematerialization of
artwork in Mendieta’s case epitomized one of possible aspects of exposing the act of
resistance as a realization of a quantum of potential through the event, appearing as a poetics
of inoperativity as defined by Agamben and erasing boundaries between the inception and
the performativity of the poetic time, a duration that is not limited to one existence or
aesthetic phenomenon. In the intersection between early feminist art practices (based on
essentialism) and the second wave that relied on anti-essentialism as a new conception,
Mendieta's work positioned its own dialectic among the separated feminist views about the
use of the female body as a medium
process of a creative (poetic) act, as an act of resistance towards the end of one's own
completion, in this context analyzed through the work of feminist artist Ana Mendieta.
Regarding the (in)completeness, Mendieta’s oeuvre exemplifies a perfect illustration that the
disappearance of her art work is a way of communication that resists production of any
formal finality, as a process within which the traces of the media used (her own body) also
disappear because of the time and circumstances left to nature. The dematerialization of
artwork in Mendieta’s case epitomized one of possible aspects of exposing the act of
resistance as a realization of a quantum of potential through the event, appearing as a poetics
of inoperativity as defined by Agamben and erasing boundaries between the inception and
the performativity of the poetic time, a duration that is not limited to one existence or
aesthetic phenomenon. In the intersection between early feminist art practices (based on
essentialism) and the second wave that relied on anti-essentialism as a new conception,
Mendieta's work positioned its own dialectic among the separated feminist views about the
use of the female body as a medium
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