This summer, Tate Modern will stage the UK’s first major exhibition dedicated to multidisciplinary artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) in over a decade. Active in the 1970s and 1980s, Mendieta’s ground-breaking practice challenged traditional notions of sculpture, photography and film. Using her own terms to describe her art, she is best known for her ‘earth-body’ works, outlining her body in the landscape with natural elements such as earth, fire and flowers. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition will be arranged thematically through symbolic locations, highlighting key moments in the artist’s career and demonstrating her persistent engagement with the natural world. Her iconic Silueta Series 1973-80 will be presented alongside newly remastered films, rarely seen paintings and drawings, late sculptures and restaged installations, shedding new light on her practice and demonstrating its lasting power for new audiences.
Mendieta’s search for origin and desire to connect with nature was driven by her experience of displacement. Born in Havana, Cuba, she was exiled to the United States with her sister after the revolution, separated from her parents, brother and homeland at only 12 years old. A student of archaeology and art at the University of Iowa, she created various works that re-establish and renew her connections to her country. Her film Ochún 1981 presents a sand-sculpted figure on the shore of Key Biscayne, Florida channelling waters between the US and Cuba. Returning to her homeland throughout the 1980s, she created her Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures) 1981, figures inspired by her evolving Silueta Series and shapes she had encountered at Neolithic sites carved directly into limestone rock, with titles drawn from Afro-Cuban traditions and indigenous Taíno culture. ‘My work is basically in the tradition of a Neolithic art’, Mendieta said in 1984, ‘I’m not interested in the formal qualities of my materials, but their emotional and sensual ones.’ These works illustrate the artist’s desire to create powerful and enduring images connected to history and her experience of the world.
Mendieta started her Silueta Series during a trip to Mexico in 1973, where she was inspired to create life-size ephemeral works exploring notions of existence, resurgence and renewal. She burnt, carved and moulded Siluetas into landscapes in regions across the Americas and Europe, often returning to sites meaningful to her or connected to ancient histories. Stating, ‘To me, the work has existed in different levels. It’s existed in the level of being in nature…and eventually being eroded away’, these imprints and outlines of the body were left to return to the earth, challenging the idea of art as a fixed object. Documented using photographs and films, visitors will be able to experience this innovative series throughout the exhibition, from the first Silueta where white flowers are strewn over Mendieta’s body, to traces of the female form imprinted into riverbanks and shores.
Central to the exhibition is a celebration of Mendieta’s connections across social, political and geographical boundaries. Developing her artistic practice on the cutting-edge Intermedia programme at the University of Iowa between 1972-1977, she embedded herself within an experimental artistic community early on. Moving to New York in 1978, she became deeply engaged with the city’s art and activist movements and became a member of A.I.R Gallery, the first not-for-profit, artist-directed gallery for women artists in the US. Foregrounding her interest in education, the show will also explore her role as a teacher in Iowa in the 1970s through early videos made in collaboration with her students, such as Parachute 1973.
Premiering in the UK, a series of newly remastered films made between 1971 and 1981 will illustrate Mendieta’s innovative approach to the medium, which included scratching or painting directly onto the celluloid. She also captured various bodies of work in film, enabling visitors to experience her iconic Anima, Silueta de Cohetes (Firework Piece) 1976 and Bird Run 1974, depicting the artist covered in feathers running across an empty beach. Mendieta’s longstanding interest in transformation will be further explored through the photographic series Untitled (Facial Cosmetic Variations) 1972, in which she distorts her appearance with cosmetics, wigs and various facial expressions.
In 1983, Mendieta was awarded the Prix de Rome fellowship at the American Academy in Italy. After a decade of predominantly making work in nature, in Rome, her practice shifted towards studio-based sculpture, allowing her to create more durable works. Tate Modern will present several of her floor-based works made with earth and binder, including Nile Born 1984, and her multi-part sculpture made of tree trunks, La Jungla (Totem Grove) 1985, in which she used gunpowder to burn dark silhouettes onto the surfaces. Joined by the artist's delicate drawings on leaves and paintings from the ‘Amategram’ series, depicting totemic forms on bark paper, these works illustrate Mendieta’s continued exploration of the female form.
Offering a chance for visitors to engage directly with the living and impermanent aspects of Mendieta’s practice, several of her ephemeral sculptures will be restaged for the exhibition. Ñañigo Burial 1976, a Silueta made from black ritual candles, will be lit regularly during the run of the show. Also featured will be a recreation of the first earth-body work that Mendieta made for an indoor gallery setting. Assembled from branches, leaves, soil, moss and stones, this room will bring a forest-like environment into the exhibition space. Expanding beyond the gallery walls, one of the artist’s tree sculptures – first made in 1982 – will be brought to life outside Tate Modern, capturing the transformation and resilience that Mendieta’s artistic vision offers.
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