Only a year to go for the exhibition I wish was already here: Ana Mendieta's retrospective at the Hirshhorn. Here's something I wrote about Mendieta and "Latino art" a while back.

Mendieta (in my view) often had an interesting relationship with death - not meaning her unfortunate end.  I met her once in 1977 at an airport in Chicago - I was heading to the University of Washington to start college.

On the flight to Seattle from Chicago, I wrote this poem on the barf bag (I still have it)... not really because of her, or influenced by her meeting (she was NOT famous when we met by accident)... but it is somewhat ironic how her life turned out.  Here it is:

Sleep is the cousin of Death

I'm falling...

It's a dream,

but I'm falling and it's raining.

I'm falling faster than the rain

and when I hit a water drop

it wounds my skin like a bullet

I'm falling...

Why am I falling in this dream?

I've heard that if you don't wake up before you hit the ground...

You die.

You die because sleep is the cousin of Death.
 

---