Research

 Body and identity task  

After our talk on body and identity within art we have been asked to research two pieces of artwork exploring themes of body and identity. The first piece I’m looking at is the piece, Body tracks created Ana Medieta in 1982. 

The piece:

The performance: 

Medieta created a series of these paintings through a performance art piece where she used her own body dressed in white clothing to created these paintings. With large pieces of paper strapped to the wall she created a dramatic performance by using blood and tempera on her arms and dragged her body down the paper covered wall falling to a heap at the end. This piece explores body and identity not only through the physical performance art of using herself but also in these pieces of art left as she’s created a sense of a human through absence. The use of medium in this piece is hugely significant, using blood to create these works gives a hugely violent emotional tone, the way the artist dragged herself down to the ground creating these dramatic claw marks only adds to the violent tone even more. This work really makes you feel the story and pain  of the person in the piece, yet there is no person, that’s why I like this piece, I have never seen the original performance but her pieces that were left really portray the drama and emotion of the original performance in a perfect way.