During this week’s readings and viewings, I was especially moved by 10 Female performance Artists You Should Know and right off the bat was taken by Ana Mendieta and her life, Art, and untimely death. I even went to search more about her immediately after reading the excerpt on her and realized her birthday was the day after mine so I figured it might also explain why I felt some type of connection. The story of her death pretty much stopped me in my tracks as she was only 36 years old and I needed to understand more but it is still very perplexing what happened on that night. I felt connected to her style of art where she essentially wanted to “find her roots” by connecting to nature after fleeing Cuba with her sister to an Orphanage in Iowa. Even the way she described her artwork “earth-body” resonates with me. One of my sisters has lovingly called me “earth and earthy” throughout our lives so I was taken by that. I was also very moved by the audacity of Carolee Schneemann’s art activism in Interior Scroll 1975. The powerful message she used to describe her work when she read out of a scroll that she removed from her vagina was jaw dropping “I didn’t want to pull a scroll out of my vagina, but the culture’s terror of my making overt what it wished to suppress fueled the image”. Being able to have taken this course has given me a new pair of eyes in which to look at many things and concepts of the world that I was simply ignoring before and makes me what to do my part to make a difference. Witnessing the artwork of these female artists that stem back to the 1960’s/70’s made me emotionally “bow down” to the courage of what they stood and continue to stand up against as the oppression during their times were even more stigmatized than it can be today.