Artist Ana Mendieta frequently conjoined the female body with nature to express her search for personal identity and support for feminist topics. Her last intended and least scholarly examined work, La Maja de Yerba (Grass Goddess), continues specific visual and thematic elements of her previous Silueta Series (Silhouette) yet also presents an aesthetically unique creation. Despite its incompletion as a result of her premature death, the preserved maquette directly stipulates a female form to be planted in grass on the Bard College campus grounds. This alignment of women and nature garners criticism for its reliance on universalism and categorizations of women’s experiences; however, Mendieta’s use of essentialism in public art contributes to circulating feminist discourse to a wider audience. This paper considers the artistic influences, thematic concepts, and employment of strategic essentialism in Mendieta’s La Maja de Yerba.

This doctoral project combines a performance-led practice with contextual research in order to demonstrate how arts practice can challenge historical perceptions of clay and enhance its material status. The core knowledge deduced from this research is that embodied performance transforms connectivity between artist and clay and produces a unified incarnation of both elements. Through the use of immersive research methods I gained insights which could not have been predicted - particularly that my experiential performances were a process of ‘clay becoming’ in which I ultimately became the clay. In terms of locality, the practice, comprising eight performance-led works and related documentation, focuses on the China Clay and Ball Clay of South West England. Traditionally in the arts, these materials are associated with ceramics, where through heating, clay becomes rigid and fixed. In contrast, my research investigates the textural fluidity and metamorphic potential of these clays in their raw state. The practice encompasses two interrelated groups of work; the In-breath and Out-breath. These terms are significant in three respects. Firstly they define two different modes and moments of practice. Secondly they refer to myself as a living component of these practices. Thirdly they reflect the cultural associations of clay as a metaphor for life. During the initial exploratory ‘In-breath’ phase of my practice, comprising four site-specific pieces, I engaged with clay at sites of historical relevance, building an expansive knowledge of my material. During the later ‘Out-breath’ phase, identification with site was relinquished. These works took place within neutral spaces, allowing the clay to be explored in relation to my body. The introduction of layering, where photographic elements of private clay rituals were situated within the context of a live performance, allowed a texturally dynamic and immersive experience to be created for both artist and viewer. By collecting and preserving clay traces from these live performances (e.g. foot and body prints) additional value was given to the embedded significance of the clay.

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-born American artist whose unique body of work incorporated performance, activism, Earth art, installation, and the Afro-Cuban practices of Santería. She began her career at the University of Iowa, were she initially received her degree in painting in 1969. It was not until 1972 that Mendieta shifted radically to performance art. Though she was raised Catholic, she developed an interest in the rituals involved with Santería, a culturally predominant Cuban religion, and it deeply influenced her work in her choice of materials and settings. Santería is one of the major faith-based lifestyles of Cuba and is characterized by a synthesis of Afro-Cuban and Catholic characteristics, along with its own unique teachings and rituals. Also a prominent theme in Mendieta’s work was her sense of displacement and her insatiable desire to reconcile her Cuban heritage, which she attempts to resolve, not only through her art, but also during several trips to Cuba. Greater still in its contribution of influence to Mendieta’s work was the ecofeminist movement which amalgamated elements of the feminist and environmental movements; Ecofeminism’s emergence in the United States coincided with the rise of Mendieta’s career during the 1970’s. The movement focused on the correlation between the oppression, degradation, and exploitation of women and the oppression, degradation, and exploitation of the Earth. This thesis examines the life of Ana Mendieta and analyzes how her works may be viewed in an ecofeminist context. It analyzes how Mendieta’s work acts as a reflection of her cultural, social, and political reality and discusses ways in which characteristics of Santería and ecofeminism as a discourse influenced the imagery and symbolism used in Mendieta’s artwork throughout her brief career. Formal analysis of Mendieta’s artwork and contextual and historical analysis of Mendieta’s life, the ecofeminist discourse, and Afro-Cuban spirituality are explored in this research.

This diploma thesis focuses on the conceptual expressions, that reflect the landscape. This thesis is also trying to imply the possible genesis of these artistic approaches. After the general definitions of terms and introduction, the thesis examines the various topics, which was related to the landscape and it's anti-mimetic visual representation since the late sixties. Another part of the work focuses on Milos Šejn, an artist with a very specific, physical relationship to nature and at the same time a former head of The Studio of Conceptual art of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, where many of his students were somehow related to nature. I chose four artists, who passed on Šejn's studio and on the basis of their work and available documents, I will try to show, how this new generation have reflected the landscape. If they were inspired by czech artists or by foreign examples, that were not available in the Czech Republic for a long time.

Twentieth century modernity has provoked multiple problems ranging from environmental degradation to human rights violations. Globally, diverse communities of people have organized to promote, not just reactive reforms, but a fundamental alteration of the foundational worldview underlying these issues. Radical activists committed their work to promoting an alternative ethos based on egalitarian, democratic, and ecologically-wise concepts. An array of methodologies emerged from these endeavors. More radical political groups focused on cultural tools to engage people in the construction of an alternative worldview. Radical activists utilized two forms of cultural politics: prefigurative politics, the physical presentation of an envisioned future and direct theory, the constant interaction between theory and practice. Within the artistic community, Ecological Artists centered their practice on cultural activism, creating publicly accessible, site-specific collaborative pieces that illuminate and utilize ecosystem principles to promote an eco-wise worldview. The concept of utilizing cultural production as a method for achieving social transformation has only recently been analyzed within the social movement discipline. Artists rarely utilize social movement vocabulary, or the term "activism" to describe their practices. To date, no correlation between artistic production and social movement strategies has been made. I argue in this thesis that Ecological Artists are cultural activists who simultaneously developed strategies and methods similar to those being worked out by radical social movement activists. While prefigurative politics and direct theory are terms defined within social movement discipline, the cultural activities are similar. Political activists' internal organization and external political work, prefigurative of an envisioned future and the result of constant interaction between theory and practice, correlates to the necessary collaborative organizations of Eco-Art and the physical presence of the work, a manifestation of the constant interaction between ecosystem theory and artistic practice. In this thesis I analyze the work of Ecological Artist Ruth Wallen as a form of cultural activism. I argue that the intention, execution, and content of her work are forms of prefigurative politics and direct theory. Ruth Wallen has been practicing Eco-Art for twenty years. Her work is focused on the heart of Eco-Art, its intention to produce an eco-wise future through artistic practice.