Ana Mendieta & Hannah Wilke
in ‘Delirious’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
12 September 2017 – 14 January 2018
Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints–Face), 1972. Courtesy: © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
Hannah Wilke, So Help Me Hannah, 1978. Courtesy: © Marsie, Emanuelle, Damon and Andrew Scharlatt, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles. Licensed by VAGA at Artist’s Rights Society (ARS), New York, DACs, London
Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke are included in ‘Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950 – 1980’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Delirious times demand delirious art, or so this exhibition proposes. The years between 1950 and 1980 were beset by upheaval. Around the globe, military conflict proliferated and social and political unrest flared. Disenchantment with an oppressive rationalism mounted, as did a corollary interest in fantastic, hallucinatory experiences.
Artists responded to these developments by incorporating absurdity, disorder, nonsense, disorientation, and repetition into their work. In the process, they destabilise space and perception, give form to extreme mental, emotional, and physical states, and derange otherwise logical structures and techniques. ‘Delirious[ explores the embrace of irrationality among American, Latin American and European artists.