Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints), "Face" 1972

Editor: This is Ana Mendieta's "Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints), 'Face'," created in 1972. It's a series of six photographs documenting a performance where Mendieta pressed her face against glass. The effect is really unsettling, like the distortion of identity. What do you see in this piece, particularly regarding its symbolism? Curator: The distortions, aren’t they fascinating? Mendieta's choice of glass becomes a potent symbol. Glass is usually transparent, meant to reveal, but here it actively deforms. Consider what this might represent about how society "sees" and shapes identity, particularly female identity. It is interesting to me to consider the pressures and distortions women experience that shape a fractured self-image. Don’t you find this tension evident? Editor: I do. The pressure is almost palpable, you know? And the repetition – six different distortions – that says something too. Almost like a continuous, ongoing process of… misrepresentation? Curator: Precisely! And consider the concept of the "mask." Throughout history, masks have served to conceal, transform, or project specific identities. But in Mendieta's work, the mask isn’t a separate object, it's the artist's own face being reshaped, almost as if by an invisible force. It forces us to think: who is in control of how we're seen? What about our agency? The symbols ask such compelling questions about agency over one's image, as well as a forced performance in life. Editor: It’s like she’s showing us the act of becoming someone else, someone distorted, right before our eyes. Something that we perhaps have become so desensitized to! Curator: Exactly, you see it. And because it's a performance documented through photography, she's embedding memory and performance within each image, demanding a re-seeing each time. That’s powerful cultural commentary embedded into the layers of this imagery. Editor: I didn't think of that element, the layering and constant revisiting of an event in this symbolic format. Thank you, it really changed my perception!