Butterfly

In Butterfly, Ana Mendieta films herself naked and motionless, wearing large feather wings, using a Super 8 camera mounted on a tripod. She then reworks the image with a sixteen-channel analog video processor, a device that transforms brightness levels into color ranges in real time, producing vibrant hues.

On a symbolic level, the film explores the theme of metamorphosis. The colors, which change in real time, gradually reveal the artist's outstretched wings. The transformation of a woman into a butterfly remains deliberately ambiguous: we do not know the origin of the silhouette, its disappearance, or whether the being absorbed by the earth is reborn or dissolves to make way for another. Butterfly thus makes visible an energy in motion, reflecting the permanent instability of being and identity. Through its life cycle, the butterfly evokes resurrection, the soul, and transformation, recurring motifs in Mendieta's work. 

This work is held by the Pinault Collection and was presented for the first time at the "Corps et âmes" exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce in 2025.