Screaming from a rooftop (for ana mendieta) 2022

Screaming from the rooftop (for Ana Mendieta)

Soil, Steel, ‘Blood’, Vinyl, Headphones, Microphone
(photos by Robbie Montgomery)

Performance
Participatory performance piece where viewers can scream from the rooftop, standing on a minimalist box. The sound of the screams is picked up by a microphone and transferred live to the headphones at the entrance – by an Ana Mendieta inspired sculpture of soil, imprinted into it is the female body.
Ana Mendieta was a feminist artist who was (suspected to be) murdered by her husband minimalist artist Carl Andre – when she fell to her 34 floors to her death from Andre’s apartment in New York in 1985.
The piece involved the nature of the building, which used to be a schoolhouse, the Boys’ playground on the rooftop and the Girls’ playground inside and downstairs, reflecting the separation of gendered spaces, the relationship of minimalist ‘man’ art vs raw performance feminist art, and also disparity in recognition between Mendieta and her husband Carl Andre. Bringing her style of art to the rooftop to be recognised and using his style of art to stand on top of it to scream for her. It is protest art at it’s core – screaming against the silence of the art world (boys club) in the time after her death.