PHILOSOPHY & GEOGRAPHY, VOL. 7, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 2004

SPECIAL SECTION

Exiled space, in-between space: existential

spatiality in Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas
Series

MARIANA ORTEGA
Department of Philosophy, John Carroll University, University Heights, OH, USA

Abstract Existential space is lived space, space permeated by our raced, gendered selves. It
is representative of our very existence. The purpose of this essay is to explore the intersection
between this lived space and art by analyzing the work of the Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta
and showing how her Siluetas Series discloses a space of exile. The first section discusses
existential spatiality as explained by the phenomenologists Heidegger and Watsuji and as
represented in Mendieta’s Siluetas. The second section analyzes the space of exile as a space
of in-between-ness and borders. Lastly, the third section discusses temporality as it relates to the
space of exile. Through the analysis of Mendieta’s Siluetas, and in light of phenomenological
accounts of space and the works of Anzaldúa and Mignolo, Ana Mendieta herself is disclosed
as well as the space characteristic of those who can no longer be said to have a “home.”

My exploration through my art of the relationship between myself and nature

has been a clear result of my having been torn from my homeland during my
adolescence. The making of my Silueta in nature keeps (makes) the transition
between my homeland and my new home. It is a way of reclaiming my roots
and becoming one with nature. Although the culture in which I live is part of
me, my roots and cultural identity are a result of my Cuban heritage.1
Ana Mendieta

Living in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write

and artists create.2
Gloria Anzaldúa

There are spaces of belonging, of fitting in, of confrontation, of forgetting, spaces that
can be measured and analyzed, clear, definite spaces where we know who we are and
why we are there. If we pay attention, we will see the boundaries in these spaces, the
walls of the rooms, the ceiling with the beautiful mural or the threatening chandelier at
its center. But, for the most part, it is not a matter of being aware, or of calculating our
ISSN 1090-3771 print/ISSN 1472-7242 online/04/010025-17  2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1090377042000196001
26 M. ORTEGA

Figure 1. Ana Mendieta. Silueta Works in Iowa, 1976–1978/1991. Color photograph documenting earth/body work,
Iowa. Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

steps so that we will not trip or run into the wall. One of the features of our being,
Heidegger says, is that we ourselves “make room,” “give space,” and “let entities within
the world be encountered.”3 In other words, we ourselves are spatial. Thus, we cannot
talk of space without talking about us, and we cannot talk about us without talking
about space. Tetsuro Watsuji thus claimed that we discover ourselves in “climate,” a
climate permeated by space, time, and history.4
To look at Ana Mendieta’s photographs of her Siluetas Series is to be taken both
to the representational space of a work of art and also to the space which claims both
presence and absence, a space perhaps fueled by the nostalgia of those who experience
exile.5 To experience those spaces is to experience Ana Mendieta, the Cuban exile, and
those who have nostalgia, “home-sickness,” for an imagined land of belonging. Keeping
in mind Heidegger and Watsuji, we follow Mendieta’s spaces, where race, sex, history,
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 27

and longing converge to offer a picture of Mendieta herself and of those who, like her,
inhabit the space of exile, a space that can be seen as yet another nepantla or
“in-between” where identities are negotiated, modified, and sometimes transformed.6
Section One offers an analysis of existential spatiality as conceived by both
Heidegger and Watsuji and provides a discussion of how such spatiality can be seen in
Mendieta’s Siluetas. Section Two questions whether or not the space represented by
Mendieta is properly defined as a space that is in-between. The relevant questions here
are: 1) Is the space of the exile the space of the in-between?, and, 2) Is the space of the
exile analogous to that of the borders? The work of Anzaldúa and Mignolo informs this
discussion.7 Finally, Section Three analyzes an element that cannot be separated from
spatiality—temporality. In opposition to Heidegger’s prioritization of time over space in
works like Being and Time, this discussion shows the interrelatedness of the two and
provides an analysis of the temporality of the exile. In the end, through the analysis of
Mendieta’s Siluetas in light of phenomenological accounts of space and the works of
theorists like Anzaldúa and Mignolo, the essay shows that space is not neutral to color,
identity, nationality, gender, or history. We who have color, identity, nationality, gender,
and history are spatial and space is of us.

Existential Spatiality
According to the Heideggerian analysis of the human being, which he calls the
Existential Analytic, human beings are spatial with regard to their “being-in-the-world.”
Without going into a lengthy explanation of what the Heideggerian view of being-in-the-
world is, it is possible to see some of the main features of the Heideggerian view of space
in relation to human beings. Such an account, coupled with Watsuji’s observations
about the relationship between humans and space, is the basis of what I refer to as
existential spatiality, the view that space is not merely an objective, geometric space to
be measured quantitatively, that may be considered independent of the human beings
who inhabit it. Rather, existential spatiality constitutes a notion of space which is
intimately linked to human beings, so much so that it would not make sense to talk
about space without considering how it is connected to us.
Heidegger himself goes so far as to claim that space is dependent on human beings.
Such a claim does not come as a surprise if one is aware of the philosophical treatment
of the notion of space and Kant’s famous claim that space is in fact a form of intuition.
While not completely removed from the Kantian treatment of space, Heidegger offers
a different explanation of space in so far as it takes into consideration the so-called
existential characteristics of human beings. Watsuji, following and elaborating upon
Heidegger, also emphasizes this interrelatedness between spatiality and human beings.
It is this connection between space and the existential characteristics of humans that I
will emphasize here in order to show how Ana Mendieta’s work can be seen as
representing an existential space that points to Mendieta’s own life and to those, who
like her, live in-between.
In what sense, then, is space connected to human beings, or even dependent on
them? At the most basic level, there is a relationship between human beings and space
in so far as human beings have, according to Heidegger, the type of being that “abolishes
distance” or has “de-severance” [Entfernung].”8 To abolish distance, to “make the
farness vanish” or “to bring something close by,” as Heidegger also describes our
de-severance, is simply our ability to put something to use as equipment, to move about
in the world and to understand what is in this world by using it (as equipment or as
28 M. ORTEGA

something that is “ready-to-hand”) without having to reflect upon or be thematic about

it. Obvious examples are our navigating in the world in such a way that we are able to
pick up objects (whether pencils, cups, or hammers) and know how to use them. We can
also think of the street, which Heidegger sees as “equipment for walking.”9
Connected to de-severance, our ability to bring things close, is the way in which we
actually find ourselves in the world. In analyzing the being-in of “being-in-the-world,”
Heidegger explains that human beings are in the world in a completely different way
than pencils, cups or hammers.10 A pencil is in a box in a completely different way than
you or I are in a room. While the pencil merely takes up space in the box, I am in this
room as a professor, a researcher; this room is not merely four walls, a ceiling and a floor
that can be measured, but the place wherein I can live and carry out my tasks, desires,
and goals.
Our de-severance and our being-in-the-world are consequently characteristics of
human beings that point to an intimate connection between space and us. Space is
encountered as a “region” where we can use objects as equipment. Heidegger claims
that “Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Space is rather ‘in’ the world
in so far as space has been disclosed by that Being-in-the-world which is constitutive for
Dasein.”11 Space is dependent on us in so far as we can disclose it in our everyday
dealings with the world or in so far as it is disclosed to us by our everyday dealings in
the world.
For Watsuji, who read Heidegger’s account and agreed with many Heideggerian
claims, the connection is even more intimate than Heidegger explains. In his work, A
Climate, a Philosophical Study, Watsuji questions the Heideggerian analysis in which time
is the basic existential structure, and claims that space should have been given the same
importance.12 In his view, human beings are inexorably linked to space in the sense that
we find ourselves in climate. He appropriates the Heideggerian account in which
humans are connected to space by way of a region, a space where we can use things as
tools or equipment, but he adds that our own aims and necessities—that which the
equipment is directed towards—are themselves dependent on climate. He writes:

Climate is seen to be the factor by which self-active human being can be made
objective. Climactic phenomena show man how to discover himself as
“standing outside” (i.e. existere) … The essential character of the tool lies in its
being “for a purpose” … Now this purpose-relation derives from human life
and at its basis we find the climatic limitations of human life. Shoes may be for
walking, but the great majority of mankind could walk without them; it is
rather cold and heat that makes shoes necessary. Clothes are to be worn, yet
they are worn above all as a protection against cold. Thus this purpose-relation
finds its final origin in climatic self-comprehension.13

Thus, we cannot think of human beings independently of the space and climate in which
they find themselves.
Thinking along with Heidegger and Watsuji directs us to see the interdependence
of human beings and space, whether in the sense that human beings disclose regions of
space or whether space and climate allow us to find ourselves. The question that comes
to mind, then, is what space does Ana Mendieta disclose through her art? In other
words, what does Mendieta bring close with her art? Who or what is disclosed by her
art?
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 29

Figure 2. Ana Mendieta. Untitled (from the Silueta Series), August 1978. Grass silueta, Iowa. Courtesy of the
Estate of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

The Siluetas
If we look at the art of this Cuban-born artist who at 13 emigrated to the US as one of
the “Peter-Pan kids,” we see photographs of her various performances on such materials
as earth, sand, and water.14 Included in her work are fire, twigs, dry leaves, mud,
gunpowder, flowers, trees, bamboo, cloth, and blood, all surrounding, accompanying,
erasing, covering, and disclosing Mendieta’s own five-foot silhouette. It is the space
represented in these works that I will discuss in light of the notion of existential
spatiality.
Mendieta’s silhouettes sit calmly and eerily on grass, sand, earth, snow, tree trunks,
and in the middle of a pond, suggesting the dichotomies of subject and object, presence
and absence while at the same time overcoming them. Let’s take for example Mendieta’s
silhouette on the grass (Figure 2). It is barely there; it can be missed if one does not pay
attention. It points to Mendieta as a subject in so far as Mendieta is a human being who
has made the work but it also points to her as an object in so far as her very silhouette
is an object of art also represented by photographic means. Nevertheless, this work of
art also problematizes the sharp dichotomy between subject and object, precisely by
disclosing a space where it is not clear whether Mendieta is subject or object.
Mendieta creates a space where there are blades of grass which are and are not her.
She is there by way of her silhouette and yet she is not there because there is only her
silhouette. The sense of absence is heightened by the feeling that the wind could make
the silhouette disappear. This is a characteristic that can be found in most of the
silhouettes, since Mendieta chooses to make her silhouettes in places where their
disappearance is only a matter of time. The silhouette done on the sand at the beach is
30 M. ORTEGA

erased by the waves; and the silhouette made of mud in the middle of the pond will
slowly sink. As Raine puts it when commenting on the form found in the Siluetas,
Its boundaries are vague and subject to immanent dissolution: at any moment,
the flowers will scatter or decompose, the mud or sand will wash away, the
flames will burn out, the figure will come to life and spirit itself out of the
frame—or a second glance will reveal what appeared to be a human form as a
momentary trick of light and shadow, a self-projection onto a chance formation
of earth or wood.”15
Thus, when encountering or seeing these silhouettes, one can get a sense of this absence
and of Mendieta’s presence and can go back and forth between this absence and
presence. In the end, however, neither definite absence nor definite presence defines the
space, only presence in absence and vice versa.
If we follow Heidegger’s insights on the interrelatedness between space and self and
consider Mendieta’s Siluetas, we observe that the space Mendieta shapes is deeply
dependent on her own being-in the world in the way described above. That space that
blurs subject and object, presence and absence is there because of the way in which
Mendieta lives or exists in the world. Her deseverance and being-in disclose or bring to
light space. As we have seen, deseverance deals with bringing close in the sense that
when we are in the world we find objects that are of use to us. But what is Mendieta
bringing close? The leaves of grass, the sand, and the stones are of use to Mendieta, yet
the result does not seem to be the one that Heidegger anticipates—that a region of
equipmentality will be available and with it a familiar world discovered.
While one can say that Mendieta uses grass, sand, and stones as things of use in
order to create her art, it is not the case that the space that has been disclosed is one
of familiarity. Rather, it is a space that, in its familiarity, also evokes what is uncanny
[unheimlich], something deeply disturbing that leads us to question our being in the
world. It obscures the sense of belonging to the world that, according to Heidegger, is
deeply connected to our ability to use the objects that we find in the world as
equipment.16 Perhaps at that moment in which her skin touches the elements, Mendieta
herself feels united to the earth. Yet as she leaves the site of her work and leaves her
silhouette, she creates a space that leads us to question her very existence and place in
the world and perhaps all of our existences.
The space that she has disclosed, however, is dependent on the way in which she
is in the world. One important aspect of Mendieta’s life, and of her art as she herself
claimed, was her condition of exile. That space disclosed by way of her silhouettes has
been described as blurring the dichotomies of subject and object, presence and absence,
and as disclosing both the familiar and the uncanny, that which is not like home. This
element is crucial in understanding the space that Mendieta’s artworks disclose.
Although commentaries on Mendieta’s work are few, many of them address her
condition of exile and the deeply personal nature of her work. It is not my intention to
make a claim about which aspect of Mendieta’s life is the most important inspiration for
her art. Rather, I take into consideration what Mendieta herself said about her
exile—that having been torn from her homeland is what led her to carry out a dialogue
between earth and the female form—and bring to light the “space of exile” or “exiled
space” that is disclosed through her art.
It might well be that the sense of non-belonging that she felt as an exile is what
fueled her art and allowed her to make a statement not just about herself and other
exiles but about the human condition. For example, Perrault states,
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 31

Mendieta saw the earth as a living body, and she wanted to be one with that
body. Nevertheless, the tragic sense of exile that informs her artwork suggests
the separateness from nature and spirit that is almost the definition of modern
life. Mendieta’s art tries to overcome this separation, and it is this, not some
formal strategy, that accounts for the power of her body of work, for we are all
in exile.17

It might also be the case that her condition as an exile is one of her inspirations, but that
issues such as race, gender, and nationality are at work in her earth and body art. For
example, Blocker is careful to point out that she does not want to see Mendieta’s work
as representing exile only as a lack of location and in terms of loss, sorrow, and personal
trauma. Rather, she explains Mendieta as using exile as “a discursive position from
which to create her art” in order to “interrogate nationality, color, ethnicity, and
gender.” She states, “Exile, here, refers not so much to her lived experience of national
displacement as to a staged identity to which we become witness.”18 Whatever the case
may be, it is important, as Rain and Blocker point out, that we don’t romanticize
Mendieta’s condition of exile, of not having a “home,” lest we fall in the trap of thinking
that identity is fixed.19
Not having a “home,” whether home is seen as a fully defined state which evokes
an established, homogeneous community, or a state in the process of being made, is
something bound to lead to anxiety, nostalgia, and longing. “Home” is the place from
which I was torn away, where I belong, where I can be myself, and where I can, for the
most part, be understood. The exile is somehow always looking for it, imagining it, or
using it as a standard by which to measure her present life. She may be completely
wrong about what it is or what it has become, but even in the painful moments of
awareness in which she may be idealizing this home, it is still something that informs her
experience.
Mendieta holds on to her condition of exile and produces art that both points to,
and reunites her, with the earth, the latter being the symbol of her “home.”20 The
absence in the work points both to her absence and the absence of a place that can be
home. This sense of the uncanny that is present in the space that Mendieta represents
can be understood as the lack of home, even when some of the most familiar elements,
earth, fire, sand, mud, are present.21 One of the most notable silhouettes, Isla, can be
seen as an example of the ubiquity of exile in her work (see Figure 3, on next page).
“Isla” points to a space that is both Mendieta herself and Cuba, her home. At the
same time, the mud is really just mud that is not really Mendieta or Cuba. And even
the space that Mendieta discloses is obscured by the fact that what we are looking at is
only a photograph. Despite this dependence on photography, however, we can still
experience the space that Mendieta discloses or lets us get close to. And it is in this
space that she discloses the earth and the world. The Mendieta that is disclosed in this
space is the human being in search of a home.
In his later musings about art, Heidegger analyzes the work of art and claims that
such work “sets up a world” and “sets-forth” the earth.22 While still holding on to his
early views about the interrelatedness between self and world, and to the importance of
the human being as the being that discloses the world, Heidegger discusses the role that
the artist has in this world-disclosure. No longer does he emphasize the importance of
the self as disclosing a world of equipmentality. Instead, he appeals to the “opening up”
of a human being such that, in that openness, being can be disclosed. The artist, then,
can be thought of as the medium through which a world is set up and the earth is
32 M. ORTEGA

Figure 3. Ana Mendieta. Untitled (from the Silueta Series), August 1978. Mud silueta, Iowa. Courtesy of the Estate
of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

set-forth. Paradoxically, according to Heidegger, the earth is disclosed as that which is

“self-secluded.” He states,

Color shines and wants only to shine. When we analyze it in rational terms by
measuring its wavelengths, it is gone. It shows itself only when it remains
undisclosed and unexplained. Earth thus shatters every attempt to penetrate
into it … The earth appears openly cleared as itself only when it is perceived
and preserved as that which is by nature undisclosable … To set forth the earth
means to bring it into the Open as the self-secluding.23

We can say that Mendieta’s Siluetas disclose the earth in such a way that it is always
hidden, not necessarily in the same way that Heidegger suggests, but in the sense that
it is hidden as one is no longer there, and we can also say that the Siluetas disclose a
world that for the exile is and is not always there.

Exiled Space, In-between Space?

The earth in Mendieta’s Siluetas stands as a symbol of the country that she lost and of
the country that she finds herself in, both of which are present and absent. Mendieta
herself is and is not in these spaces, as the silueta above shows. The Mendieta made of
flowers is slowly being washed away by the sea, leaving only her torso, as if it had been
cut in two. She is in-between, not quite on the sand or on the water anymore. She dwells
in that space that is of both water and sand. It is this space of in-between-ness, as I
choose to characterize the space of the exile, that this section analyzes. One of the
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 33

Figure 4. Ana Mendieta. Untitled (from the Silueta Series), July 1976. Red flowers silueta on sand, Mexico.
Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

central questions here is whether such a space is analogous to the “border-space”

theorized by writers such as Anzaldúa and Mignolo.
Following Blocker, I see the space that Mendieta discloses as a liminal space, a
space of the in-between. According to Blocker, this space created by Mendieta points to
the performativity of her exile. As she says,

By engaging the contradictions of identificatory practice relative to the female,

the primitive, the earth, and nation, Mendieta occupies the discursive position
of exile, and she uses this position to produce in us a sense of the uncanny. She
34 M. ORTEGA

uses, in other words, exile performatively to question the limits and fixity of
identity.24

In other words, Mendieta’s work is read not simply as representative of the longing of
the exile but as a more complicated performance which aims at displacing the idea that
identity, whether national, sexual, or personal, is fixed. As Rogoff puts it, “Geographies
and their signification thus emerge not as the site of secure and coherent identities but
rather as those of disruptive interventions in the historical narratives of culture.”25 While
I agree with these claims about the importance of the performative in Mendieta’s work
and its movement away from notions of identity and fixity, I still think that Mendieta’s
own experience as an exile is of great importance and is key in her disclosure of the
space of the in-between. Mendieta’s own in-between-ness is both cause and effect of her
artistic creation.
This space can be understood in two ways, as a metaphoric or symbolic theoretical
space, or as an actual, geographic space (in the negative sense if one is referring to exile).
Looking at the former, the way in which spatiality is construed as pertaining to the
symbolic and the metaphoric, leads me to make a connection with “border theorizing”
or border thinking. Here I would like to suggest that being in the space of exile is parallel
to being in the space of the borderlands in the sense that Anzaldúa speaks of. Even
though there are important differences when considering exile and borderlands, most
importantly the fact that there are cases in which the exile may not return to the
“homeland” whereas the border citizen may visit both sides of the border, there are still
significant points of similarity.
One of these points is that the space of exile is one of both presence and absence.
We have seen how Mendieta’s work clearly represents this sense of being neither here
nor there, but perhaps in one or both places. While describing her experience of being
a Chicana in a white-dominated society and a lesbian in a heterosexual-dominated
society, Anzaldúa sees herself as caught in the borderlands where she is “half and half,”
the “new mestiza,” and “caught in between worlds.” In being caught in between worlds,
she is not fully in the white world or the heterosexual world, and yet has to inhabit these
worlds as they are the dominant ones. She is in these worlds and yet she is not there
because she doesn’t belong. Yet, she also says that her mestiza consciousness allows her
to be “at both shores at once.”26 While Mendieta could not literally be at both shores
at once and could not even be on both shores since it was not possible for her to go back
to her country, she was still in Cuba by way of her memory of it and by the way in which
the notion or construct of “home” played a role in her life, as if “dragging the old skin
along … dragging the ghost of the past.”27 The exile and the border-dweller, then, live
in the space of absence and presence, which can also be thought as a “third” space or
perspective.28
The second element that is shared by the experience of being in the space of exile
and the space of the borderlands is the experience of the uncanny, or that which is “not
like home.” Although some interpreters understand this characteristic in terms of a
Freudian analysis, I choose to see it in more mundane terms. We have seen that the
uncanny that is brought to light by Mendieta’s work has to do with the sense that
familiar elements such as earth, sand, water, and fire can be arranged in such a way to
give us a sense of the unfamiliar. For example, when we look at a photograph depicting
Mendieta’s silhouette, we cannot understand exactly what is going on, and we feel
uneasy and disturbed. Whether we will all get this feeling is not clear and the reason why
we get it may be due to the interplay of the elements, the displacement of subject and
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 35

object, presence and absence, or it due to a completely different cause. Here, however,
I suggest that Mendieta effectively handles the elements to create a space which
displaces familiar dichotomies. This displacement may be the cause of our sense of the
uncanny when we experience her art. After all, fixity seems to be one of our most
cherished ideals.
For Anzaldúa, it is this experience of not having a fixed identity that is demanded
from certain groups in society that leads to a state of “intimate terrorism” or “psychic
unrest.” However, she also sees the inhabiting of the borderlands as an opportunity. She
states,

So, don’t give me your tenets and your laws. Don’t give me your lukewarm
gods. What I want is an accounting with all three cultures—white, Mexican,
Indian. I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face, to staunch the
bleeding with ashes, to fashion my own gods out of my entrails. And if going
home is denied me then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new
culture—una cultura mestiza—with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar
and my own feminist architecture.29

She sees the experience of the borderlands as an opportunity in which we can forge a
new kind of consciousness that will be able to deal with contradictions and inconsisten-
cies and that will be able to gain creative impetus even though it is also plagued by pain,
fear, doubt, and longing. This is her “mestiza consciousness” whose work is “to break
down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and
through the images in her work how duality is transcended.”30 Is Mendieta’s conscious-
ness a mestiza consciousness? Is her work that very work that Anzaldúa so vividly
describes?
Anzaldúa points to the interrelatedness of life and art when she discusses the act of
writing and claims that the psychic unrest of living in the borderlands is fuel for artistic
creation. This psychic unrest, she says,

is like a cactus needle embedded in the flesh. It worries itself deeper and
deeper, and I keep aggravating it by poking at it. When it begins to fester I have
to do something to put an end to the aggravation and to figure out why I have
it. I get deep down into the place where it’s rooted in my skin and pluck away
at it, playing it like a musical instrument—the fingers pressing, making the pain
worse before it can get better. Then out it comes … That’s what writing is for
me, an endless cycle of making it worse, making it better, but always making
meaning out of the experience, whatever it may be.31

For Anzaldúa creating is painful as well as transformative, both of oneself and of matter,
whether it is ink, paper, paint, or mud, grass, and sand (as in Mendieta’s art). It involves
blocks, being paralyzed, but also surges of energy, understanding, or release. Through
her art, through her performances of her silhouette, Mendieta, like Anzaldúa, both
presses and plucks those cactus needles that represent the difficult, contradictory life of
in-between-ness. Here life and creation go hand in hand; mestiza consciousness and
creativity converge to disclose the space of exile or of the in-between.
This space is disclosed by Mendieta the artist. Yet, as we have seen, the artist
herself is disclosed in this space. Like Anzaldúa, Watsuji links the self’s artistic creation
with the space that one inhabits. Although he ultimately overemphasizes the link
between one’s character and climate and space, he nevertheless reminds us of the
36 M. ORTEGA

Figure 5. Ana Mendieta. Silueta Work (Anima, Alma Silueta en Fuego), October 1975. Cloth and gunpowder
silueta, Iowa. Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

intimate connection that there is between art and climate, between a self’s artistic
development and her space.32 As he states,

Just as place characteristics signify characteristics of spiritual make-up, so also

do they signify artistic characteristics and, hence, those of the imaginative
power of the artist.33

Mendieta’s imaginative power then, can be seen as intimately linked to her living in
Iowa and her having been uprooted from her native land, Cuba. Just thinking of the
differences in climate in Iowa and Cuba (as well as the climate of the other sites that she
chose to perform her silhouettes) leads one to wonder to what extent Mendieta was
affected by this and to what extent her art is dependent on it. Although one cannot say
that her art is a direct result of her interaction with her space, one can say, along with
Watsuji, that her creativity was deeply influenced by her experience of space as well as
the elements.
As we have seen, Mendieta’s disclosure of this space of exile, of in-between-ness
and of borderlands, that is deeply dependent on a life lived in different spaces and
different climates yields a symbolic or metaphorical space where we can “theorize”
about exilic or border issues. Mignolo traces different instances of what he calls “border
thinking,” which he sees as:

thinking from dichotomous concepts rather than ordering the world in dichotomies.
Border thinking, in other words, is logically, a dichotomous locus of enuncia-
tion and, historically, is located at the borders (interiors or exteriors) of the
modern/colonial world system.34

While Mignolo is deeply interested in taking into account particular local histories of
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 37

particular geopolitical spaces as well as the complexities of these histories, since they are
not linear, he is also interested in the epistemological consequences brought about by
border thinking. That is, Mignolo’s vision of the borders is deeply dependent on the
theoretical spaces opened by border thinking. Such a space, he claims, will allow us to
recognize the difference between accounts of the colonial difference that, while critical
of colonialism, are still permeated by it.
Anzaldúa’s and Mignolo’s understandings of border thinking serve as examples of
the importance of the theoretical space of exile and the borderlands. One must be
careful, however, not to treat this space as primarily a theoretical space in which we can
plug in any and all of our ambiguities and which results in a homogenization of the very
people that are being described as heterogeneous. In clinging to the “new mestiza” and
theorizing about her as the example of the being that is not a unified subject, and by
seeing her as our new model, we may in fact romanticize her and her condition, thus
missing the reasons why people like Anzaldúa write about the borderlands in the first
place.35 It is possible that there may be a “colonializing” appropriation of the “new
mestiza,” leading us to think that after Anzaldúa’s writings (as well as the work of writers
such as Chela Sandoval and Cherrie Moraga), we have an understanding of who these
people are and how they are to be treated. We might even leave thinking that even
though we are not all Chicanos, we are all new mestizos much in the same way that
Anzaldúa describes, or that we are all exiles given our condition in modernity (as we
have seen in the case of Perreault’s interpretation).
Yet, the work of Anzaldúa, although pointing to the theoretical underpinnings of
the space of the borderlands, comes from a very specific, material site and condition,
just as the work of Mendieta comes from the very specific experience of someone who
was forced to abandon her homeland, Cuba, and to live in Iowa where she was “looked
as an erotic being (myth of the hot Latin), aggressive, and sort of evil.”36 It is from these
specific positions that Anzaldúa and Mendieta produce their work and it is from these
specific positions that their work should be understood. Although we cannot claim such
positions, we need to be aware of them when we interpret their creative works. Even I,
whose main inspiration to write about Mendieta was my own experience of exile, cannot
fully understand Mendieta’s positionality. I can acknowledge it, try to understand it, and
compare it to my own experience.
It is compelling that the space of the exile and in-between-ness can be disclosed
through art. Mendieta’s artworks, as well as Anzaldúa’s writing, are indeed powerful
disclosures of such a space.

Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to revisit Heidegger’s and Watsuji’s insights about the
interrelatedness between space and self, and the view of existential spatiality derived
from their work. In his early work, Heidegger emphasizes the relationship between space
and the equipmentality of the things that are in it, thus claiming that human beings
disclose regions of space in which we can use things as equipment. Such regions would
not be possible if there were no human beings who have goals or desires towards which
equipmentality is directed. Watsuji sees spatiality (together with temporality) as one of
the basic structures of human beings that not only directs equipmentality but also
38 M. ORTEGA

discloses us to ourselves. Such spatiality is conceived in terms of its climate and the
importance that climate has in our lives.
If we keep Watsuji’s claims in mind, it is possible to avoid some of the pitfalls
regarding the conception of the space of the exile or the in-between as a symbolic,
metaphoric, theoretical space that follow from analyses such as Anzaldúa’s and
Mignolo’s. The pitfall is the forgetting of the specific sites, locations, and geographic
positions that inform the theorists or artists of the in-between, and thus characterizing
them in a general way that leads to their homogenization, to claims that they can be
clearly understood, and to claims that in the end we are all like them. From Heidegger
we learn the importance that our goals and aims have in the conceptualization of space.
Yet we do not learn about how these very goals and aims are deeply connected to
climate. It is Watsuji who introduces this element, thus creating an indissoluble
connection between space and self. If we take this connection seriously, we are led not
to forget the specific space that Mendieta comes from, and out of which her own self
is disclosed.
The space that Watsuji sees as a basic existential structure of human beings is also
inevitably tied to time:
Here the space- and time-structure of human existence is revealed as climate
and history: the inseparability of time and space is the basis of the inseparabil-
ity of history and climate. No social formation could exist if it lacked all
foundation in the space-structure of man, nor does time become history unless
it is founded in such social being, for history is the structure of existence in
society. … it is from the union of climate with history that the latter gets its
flesh and bones.37
Space and time are interrelated; we occupy spaces that have specific climates that inform
our specific histories.
This temporal, historical aspect of space can also be seen in Mendieta’s Siluetas. It
is represented not only by the fact that each silhouette is placed in a space where one
can capture the passage of time by way of the disappearing silhouette, such as when it
is washed away by the sea or burned by the flames, but also by the very fact that
Mendieta herself executes a series of silhouettes, which can all be accessed through
photographs. The photographs, however, fix time, and we can only imagine the future
that is to come for Mendieta’s silhouettes. The temporality of her work is best captured
in the various videos of her performances.38
When Mendieta is finally able to return to the earth, to her homeland, she produces
a series entitled Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures), which is based on a
combination of her silhouette and Cuban mythology, and are considered “the most
explicit example of sexual identity and cultural identity.”39 The titles of the large works
are in Taino, a language of an indigenous group in Cuba, and connect Mendieta to her
motherland. Importantly, these works are carved on stone to remain there through the
passage of time. Before her early and tragic death, Mendieta was able to inscribe herself
in the Cuban landscape, to make her mark on rock and thus perhaps to find herself, to
show herself as a Cuban in Cuba and to return home.40 Yet, we know that this is too
simplistic an explanation that would carve the space of the exile or in-between-ness as
one that can be conquered by a return home and that would appeal to the notion of
home as fixed. We know better.
The temporality that accompanies space is not so easily tracked or explained. It is
not the sequence of nows that has had priority in our theorizing since Aristotle. As
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 39

Figure 6. Ana Mendieta. View of Cueva de Aguila. Rupestrian Sculptures: Untitled, Atabey, Untitled, Untitled
[Guanaroca (First Woman)] 1981. Carved cave walls executed at Escaleras de Jaruco, Jaruco State Park, Havana,
Cuba. Courtesy of the Estate of Ana Mendieta and Galerie Lelong, New York.

Heidegger explains, it is “a unity of a future which makes present in the process of

having been.”41 In other words, the present, past, and future are interrelated and we
cannot think of the present without taking into consideration our past history and our
projects or aims for the future. Mendieta does not capture the definitive “now” in which
she finally returns home and can be at peace. She points toward the future not only by
developing another series of works before her death, but also by continuing to disclose
the space of the exile, of the in-between, and its relation to self and time through her
Siluetas even as she is no longer present.

Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Ronald Sundstrom and Nicolás León for insightful comments and
suggestions and to Robin Park from Galerie Lelong, New York.

Notes
1. As quoted in Gloria Moure, Ana Mendieta (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, S.A., 1996), 108.
2. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands La Frontera, The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 73.
3. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1962), Sections 22–24.
4. Tetsuro Watsuji, Climate and Culture, A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1961), 9. See also Tetsuro Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsuro’s Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan, trans.
Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), Chap. 9. Watsuji distinguishes
between climate and environment. He sees climate not as equivalent to natural environment but rather
as an element of the structure of human existence.
5. I do not wish to claim that Mendieta’s work is solely driven by the nostalgia characteristic of the exile, a
nostalgia which many times longs for a fixed positionality. See Irit Rogoff, “The Discourse of Exile,
40 M. ORTEGA

Geographies and Representations of Identity,” Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts, July (1989): 72,
where she claims that “There is little nostalgia or illusion about the recuperation of previous cultural
coherencies in any aspect of Mendieta’s work.” I think that nostalgia does play a role in Mendieta’s
artworks in the sense that it is part of her life and consequently informs her creativity. It is a different issue
whether the actual work produced points to a final, acquired destination that can finally provide comfort.
6. “Nepantla” is a Nahuatl word meaning “place in the middle,” or “in-between,” space.
7. Anzaldúa, Borderlands and Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, Coloniality, Subaltern Knowl-
edges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
8. Heidegger, Being and Time, 139[105].
9. Recall Heidegger’s insistence that being-in-the-world has to do with a non-thematic awareness of the
world. In other words, Heidegger describes our relationship to the world in terms of our non-reflective
understanding of the world. He does not deny that we also have reflective understanding, but he sees this
latter understanding as dependent on our day-to-day non-reflective understanding. See Heidegger, Being
and Time, Sections 12–13.
10. Heidegger, Being and Time, 79[54].
11. Heidegger, Being and Time, 146[111].
12. Recall that Heidegger sees all existentialia or existential characteristics as “equiprimordial” or having the
same importance, with the exception of temporality. See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II,
375[327], where he states that “The primordial unity of the structure of care lies in temporality.”
13. Watsuji, Climate and Culture, 13.
14. “Peter-Pan kids” refers to the children from the 1960s “Pedro Pan Operación” in which almost 14,000
Cuban children were sent from Cuba to foster homes in the US in order to protect them from being
socialized by Castro’s system and from the imminent war (Bay of Pigs Invasion). Ana and her sister,
Raquel, were sent to Iowa in 1961. For an interesting discussion of issues of racism related to Mendieta’s
move to Iowa and issues of the significance of “earth” in Mendieta’s work see Jane Blocker, Where is Ana
Mendieta?, Identity, Performativity, and Exile (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), Chapter 2.
15. Anne Raine, “Embodied Geographies: Subjectivity and Materiality in the Work of Ana Mendieta,” in
Generations & Geographies in the Visual Arts, Feminist Readings, ed. Griselda Pollock (London: Routledge,
1996), 239.
16. This is an important observation when considering how well Heideggerian phenomenology does or does
not explain the lived experiences of beings who are multicultural. It suggests that certain revisions need
to be made to the Heideggerian account given the experiences of these selves. I discuss this issue in more
detail in “‘New Mestizas,’ ‘World-travelers,’ and ‘Dasein’: Phenomenology and the Multi-Voiced,
Multi-cultural Self,” Hypatia, 16, no. 3 (2001): 1–29.
17. John Perrault, “Earth and Fire,” in Ana Mendieta, A Retrospective, guest curators, Petra Barreras del Rio
and John Perreault (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987), 14.
18. Blocker, Where’s Ana Mendieta?, 27.
19. See Raine, “Embodied Geographies,” 236 and Blocker, Where’s Ana Mendieta?, Chap. 3.
20. See Blocker’s interesting discussion about how Mendieta’s art works make a connection between earth
and nation even though these are supposed to be opposed categories in Blocker, Where’s Ana Mendieta?,
48.
21. For a Freudian interpretation of the “uncanny” see Blocker, Where’s Ana Mendieta?, 75.
22. Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, and Thought,
trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 43–49.
23. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 47.
24. Blocker, Where’s Ana Mendieta?, 73.
25. Rogoff, “The Discourse of Exile,” 73.
26. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 78.
27. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 49.
28. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 46.
29. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 22.
30. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 80.
31. Anzaldúa, Borderlands, 73.
32. See Watsuji, Climate and Culture, Chaps. 2 & 3, in which he discusses the characters of human beings that
inhabit monsoon, desert, and meadow climates, and ultimately essentializes the relationship between
character and climate and is subsequently led to affirm the “uniqueness” of the Japanese character.
33. Watsuji, Climate and Culture, 205.
 EXILED SPACE, IN-BETWEEN SPACE 41

34. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, 85. In this text Mignolo also considers what he calls “double
critique” and “Creolization” as border thinking, as theorized by the Moroccan philosopher Abdelhebir
Khatibi and the Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant respectively.
35. I should add here that even Anzaldúa herself may be guilty of romanticizing the new mestiza and the
elements that are supposed to be part of her heritage. For example, Anzaldúa’s use of Indian mythology
is at times indicative of this stance. While it may be that some Chicanos who find themselves in the
borderlands feel a connection with their Indian heritage, many might not—in fact, many may feel
completely unconnected to it and may not be able to forge a connection. This may also be the case for
Latinos who recognize the importance of her account of the new mestiza and who feel that she is
capturing their own experience. See Benjamin Alire Saenz, “In the Borderlands of Chicano Identity,” in
Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics, eds Scott Michaelsen and David E. Johnson (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997). See also Debra Castillo and María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba,
Border Women, Writing from la frontera (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). In the
introduction to this text, Castillo and Tabuenca Córdoba criticize both Anzaldúa and Mignolo for
providing explanations of the borders that are too theoretical and that consequently leave behind the real
people of the borders, thus creating merely a “floating signifier for a displaced self” (35).
36. Moure, Ana Mendieta, 101. An important element of Mendieta’s work connected to her Cuban heritage
which I do not discuss here, is her use of Santería. For an analysis of Santería in the Siluetas, see Mary
Jane Jacob, Ana Mendieta The Silueta Series, 1973–1980 (New York: Galerie Lelong, 1991).
37. Watsuji, Climate and Culture, 9–10.
38. One can see footage of this video in the 1987 film “Ana Mendieta, Fuego de Tierra” by Kate Horsfield,
Nereyda Garcia-Ferraz, and Branda Miller.
39. Moure, Ana Mendieta, 163.
40. Mendieta died in 1985. Her husband, the well-known artist Carl Andre, was tried for her death and
acquitted. More commentators have discussed Mendieta’s work after her tragic death, and, unfortunately,
as Coco Fusco points out, many “invoked her name as a metaphor for female victimization, transforming
her into a contemporary New York vision of Frida Kahlo.” See Coco Fusco, “Displacement: Traces of
Ana Mendieta,” Poliester, 4 (1992): 61. However, Mendieta’s work should be appreciated in its own right,
not just for its connection with a tragic event. For a discussion of Mendieta’s death and her relationship
with Andre, see Robert Katz, Naked by the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990).
41. Heidegger, Being and Time, 374[326].

Note on contributor
Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio. Her
research focuses on questions of self and sociality in existential phenomenology, in particular Heideggerian
Phenomenology. She is also interested in “U.S. Third World” Feminism, Latin American thought, and Race
Theory.