Birth shows a sculpture Ana Mendieta made of mounded mud in shallow water. It is decidedly feminine in its configuration and reminiscent of The Woman of Willendorf, ca. 28,000–25,000 BCE, one of the earliest known sculptural representations of the human body. In the video, the sculptural form suddenly begins to combust, with smoke violently erupting from the vaginal form in the middle of the sculpture; the smoke gradually dissipates, leaving behind the blackened earth. Mendieta firmly believed in the power of nature, stating, “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to specter, from specter to plant, from plant to galaxy. My works are the irrigation veins of this universal fluid. Through them ascend the ancestral sap, the original beliefs, the primordial accumulations, the unconscious thoughts that animate the world.”

Label from One Another: Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, March 7–June 1, 2014