In 1981, artist Ana Mendieta carved this figure onto the wall of a cave in Jaruco National Park in Cuba. She hoped that visitors would think they stumbled upon an ancient petroglyph. Mendieta created many such sculptures during this trip to her home country and gave each a name drawn from Cuban folklore. She named this figure Atabey after a zemi (ancestral spirit) in the tradition of the Taíno, an indigenous group native to the Greater Antilles. Atabey is the consciousness of Mother Earth and takes the form of a woman. In this photograph, Mendieta fuses her own figure with that of Atabey. 

Mendieta said that creating this series of photographs was “an intimate act of communion with the earth, a loving return to the maternal breasts.” Mendieta left Cuba at the age of twelve as a part of a United States government initiative to help children escape Cuba’s communist regime. She and her sister were placed in Iowa, where they grew up in group homes, boarding schools, and foster care. Much of Mendieta’s artwork as an adult was a response to her exile and resulting feelings of displacement and isolation.   

-Linnea Seidling, Assistant Curator of Glass