It should be noted here that the culture/nature dichotomy is just as important to Butler as it is to Mendieta. Early on in Bodies That Matter, Butler asks the following question: "Is sex to gender as feminine is to masculine?" Nature has traditionally been associated with the feminine; thus, culture or some agency thereof will often "act" upon nature, interfering with it. Nature is thus considered as a passive surface - the feminine, the vaginal - with culture being associated with the masculine, the phallus. Butler writes, One question that feminists have raised, then, is whether the discourse which figures the action of construction as a kind of imprinting or imposition is not tacitly masculinist, whereas the figure of the passive surface, awaiting that penetration act whereby meaning is endowed, is not tacitly or - perhaps - quite obviously feminine.

In Mendieta's piece, we see a dramatization of these issues as the artist - an...

She is thus subverting the laws of gender and sex that our society has been historically based on, while ironically re-iterating the myth of the traditional association of women with nature. The artist's body seems frozen, solidified against the tree - almost as though it had been there for centuries. She thus becomes a sort of living statue - that is, a living reminder of the indissolubility of gender and sex, and a living, breathing embodiment of the performance of both in a nexus that is not quite the social, not quite the natural, but a little of both.
Bibliography

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York:

Routledge.

Mendieta, Ana. 1977. Tree of Life. Retrieved on November 17, 2007 at http://www.burrac.com/ah/45/Mendieta,%20Tree%20of%20Life,%201977.jpg.