One of Linda Montano’s “chicken books”, a series limited to 111 books and periodicals from Montano’s personal library, each one decorated with an original gouache or pencil drawing by her of a chicken (perhaps in ecstasy?). The “chicken drawings” range from small compositions to full-page explosions. All drawings are unique and original. Most copies bear the written statement: “From the archive of Linda May Montano.” The edition itself is the product of a performance of sorts. The books reflect many of Linda Montano’s deepest and most consistent interests: feminism, performance, spirituality, Asian and Native American thought and religion, and individual artists. Most of the books contain contributions by or about her, Book conditions runs from cloth binding in dust jackets to a few well-worn mass-market paperbacks.
The catalog:
An extraordinary effort to reinterpret Ana Mendieta as a pioneer of performance, video, body art, photography, land art and sculpture in the twentieth century. Ana Mendieta: She Got Love gathers over 130 works by this Cuban-American artist, created between 1972 and 1985 and chosen from among the most significant in the prolific production of her brief life. The volume unveils her extremely personal language, which is visionary and material, magical and poetic, political and progressive. In quite a short time (her career as an artist lasted just thirteen years) she experimented with a variety of media: performance, video, photography, drawing, and sculpture, each time including her own image into the work and every time looking for answers, which she would search for not only in the realm of tradition but in everything that links our human roots to the spiritual. Today she is considered a cornerstone of a particular moment in history, and thanks to her eclectic nature, many women artists from different parts of the globe and from later generations have looked at her and her work as a true point of reference.
