Ana Mendieta's Visionary Land Art Lives On at Tate Modern

Summary

• Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta gets the spotlight in a new major retrospective at Tate Modern
• On through January 2027, the exhibition spans sculpture, performance, photography, film, drawing, and installation, painting a full, tender picture of an artist of a generation
• Rarely seen works, newly remastered films, and her iconic Silueta series are also on view

Tate Modern in London honors the visionary legacy of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta with a new landmark retrospective. Running through January 2027, the exhibition cements Mendieta’s place as a 20th-century great, tenderly and wholly spotlighting her pioneering practice that resculpted the relationship between body, land, and identity.

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948, Mendieta was exiled to the United States at just 12-years-old. Raised in Iowa, she studied archaeology and art and developed a multidisciplinary practice that sought to re-establish a bridge to her home country.

Working across sculpture, performance, photography, film and installation, she became best known for her radical “earth-body” works. In contrast to the monumental gestures favored by many of her, namely male, contemporaries, her interventions with the landscape were more intimate, subtler, embedding traces of human form directly into nature.

Her best-known series, Silueta, also central to the Tate retrospective, began in 1973, when, across the Americas and Europe, she burned, molded, and carved ephemeral forms into natural environments, imprinting herself onto the land, while tackling themes of displacement, renewal, belonging, and spiritual reconnection

The retrospective also features “Ñañigo Burial” (1976), a live Silueta made from black ritual candles, and her first indoor earth-body work, alongside a selection of early films by the artist, several newly remastered, such as “Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece)” 1976, “Bird Run” 1974, “Ochún” 1981, and “Parachute” (1973). Delicate leaf drawings and selections from her Amategram painting series will also be on view.

While Mendieta has been the subject of several major shows in recent years, the Tate’s presentation stands out for resisting the tendency to frame her legacy through her tragic death in 1985, whose story and alleged perpetrator, Carl Andre, often overshadow her own achievements. Instead, the show centers on the full breadth of her remarkable practice, restoring focus to the ideas and innovations that made her one of the artists of a generation.

“To me, the work has existed in different levels,” she once said. “It’s existed in the level of being in nature…and eventually being eroded away.”

Ana Mendieta is now on view in London until January 17, 2027. Check out the museum’s website for more information on how to visit.

Tate Modern
Bankside,
London SE1 9TG,
United Kingdom