Ana Mendieta's formative years at the University of Iowa were fundamental to her development as an artist. she transferred as an undergarduate in summer 1967, remaining a part of the University community for ten years and completing two master's degrees, the first in painting and the other five years later in the university's new Intermedia Program. During the 1970s she progressed with powerful spurts of creavity to create some of the most truly innovative earth-body performance pieces by any artist working in those individual genres from 1973 onwards. A study of her background, training, and artistic influences during this fruitful decade reveals the origins of her art.
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A further set of performative self-portraits made during this same period, Untitled (Facial Hair Transplant), 1972, would form the basis of a set of silkscreens submitted for her master's thesis for the painting program. In two different pieces in the Intermedia studio, Mendieta slowly and deliberated transferred the facial hair of a friend, Morty Sklar, onto her own face in a seemingly ritualized manner. In the first piece, she is seated at a table before a mirror in the Intermedia classroom. She begins by applying glue to her upper lip while her friend simultaneously begins cutting hairs of his moustache, passing them to Mendieta to apply to her own upper lip. At the end of the piece the two are photographed together, showing his moustache and beard transferred onto her face.

Julia P. Herzberg

Ana Mendieta - Earth Body, Olga M. Viso, Hirshhorn Museum and Smithsonian Institution, Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2004