Vacancies and Outlines
on loss and ana mendieta's siluetas 🥀
1.
My flower lady is missing and I won’t shut up about it.
On Saturdays, on my way to the farmers market, I feel her vacancy the most. I leave in the morning with a gaunt hope that she might be there. But yesterday, like many Saturdays, she was not.
I leaned on the expectedness of our weekly transactions the way one gets used to the sound of a neighbour's dog or the annual return of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. A light reminder that you are home, and that time has passed. Her presence became a part of my atmosphere and that atmosphere became a home.
I don’t believe anything tragic happened to her. Vendors dip in and out of the market all the time. But the truth remains: she’s left me. Despite her disappearance, her lot isn’t empty. I wasn’t expecting, like, a Law & Order: SVU crime scene investigation outline of her – of her petals – but the general bustle of the farmer’s market has carried on, hauntingly uninterrupted. Other vendors have bloated into her vacancy with a nonchalant disloyalty, a casual bartering, an eerie unremembering of what once stood there. What left us all.
2.
From 1973 to 1978, Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta unveiled a sculpture series called “Siluetas.” In the series, she outlined her body in landscapes between Iowa and Mexico, interlocking the body with nature.
She carved her corpse into flowers. Into clay. Inflamed. In water. Imbuing the lore of ancient goddesses, she stenciled herself into the earth. Her message is one of promise: even after she has left, her outline – her impact – will remain.
Earlier this week, I came across one of her siluetas on a friend’s Instagram story. I clicked on the post and read the caption that accompanied the carousel of artwork, detailing the duration of her life from 1948 - 1985. Soon, I began seeing her silhouettes everywhere. Two friends from opposite sides of the world shared posts of Mendieta’s sculptures. Next, the Instagram page of New York Magazine’s senior art critic platformed a tribute as well.
I searched to understand why the world was making me aware of her now. Was it the anniversary of her death? Was there a new exhibit of her past work? I couldn’t find anything. But the world has a strange way of making you aware things, connecting our consciousness in an infinite loop.
But maybe that’s just the internet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
3.
In the winter, back when I was a child in Canada, I would make snow angels. Upon the first snowfall, the backyard became embroidered with winged figurines identifiable through the screen windows of my parent’s bedroom.
Later, on my tippy toes, I’d peep through the window to witness the imprints I left of myself in the white powder. Each day the lawn commissioned a fainter outline of me floating to the surface. Like memory foam, my silhouette disappeared.
In the spring, when the snow melted and grass sprouted in its place, I swear I could see the slightest difference between the greener grass where I once laid and the surface that I didn’t.
In the earth: an outline of a boy who left.
4.
While the farmer’s market carried on, I remained loyal – or at least I tried to.
The first week, I glanced the opposite way as I passed bodegas with blooming marigolds.
On the second week, I nodded but skipped past a different flower lady in the park, my apartment deprived of its usual floral scent. It was too fresh that it almost felt adulterous to indulge in another.
But, by week three, I grew weak. My willpower wilted. I ‘discovered’ a new flower lady a couple of blocks south of the park – where no vendor could witness my diversion – and filled my apartment with hydrangeas.
It turns out hydrangeas are the hardest to keep alive. A florist once instructed me to smash the stems. Change their water every day. Clip their legs to allow for easier absorption or whatever. But even after I amputated their stems, they still found a way to leave me. They always died.
5.
It is widely speculated that Ana Mendieta was murdered by her husband, also a sculptor, Carl Andre. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, so I don’t get sued. During a heated argument between the two, Mendieta “fell” from her 34th-floor apartment to land on the roof of a deli, a couple blocks east of Washington Square Park.
I don’t think I need to tell you that her husband was acquitted of second-degree murder but I will anyway.
The inconclusive nature of her death sparked outrage within the artist community. When the Dia Beacon exhibited Andre’s work in 2014, a swarm of protestors dumped animal guts and blood outside of the gallery. Bloody siluetas that resembled Mendieta’s decorated the institution’s lawn. A fiery outline of a woman’s body of work staining the gallery.
Later, I discovered why the internet had been so saturated with images of her work. Carl Andre died just last week.
6.
I take stock of what, like the flower lady, has left me: the movie theatre up the street from my old apartment; the wing place near the C train – not to be confused with the chicken shop near the C train that’s thankfully alive and well; the architect that lived near Washington Square Park; biscuits at the bakery down the street; the promise of new music from Rihanna. There was a time when these things felt like essential makings of a home. And yet, in their absence, a home persisted.
In a 2001 essay for The New York Times, two times Pulitzer-winning writer Colson Whitehead gestures that a home can be cemented through loss:
No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, ''That used to be Munsey's'' or ''That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge.'' That before the Internet cafe plugged itself in, you got your shoes resoled in the mom-and-pop operation that used to be there. You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.
Loss will inevitably maim you in this life. It will leave a scar years after it’s touched you. But perhaps through Mendieta’s work and Whitehead’s words, a more optimistic conclusion can be reached. One that suggests that even when something is gone, something else takes its place. Or the vacancy of the thing – its silhouette or silueta – illuminates a necessary void for you to fill.
And then, before you know it, an empty vase becomes full of flowers once again.
I see Ana Mendieta, I always click ❤️ have you heard the podcast Death of an Artist? It’s a very thorough look at her career, the murder trial, and the art world’s reaction.
Really loved this essay ❤️🔥 I miss your flower lady like I know her!