Ana Mendieta retrospective in London: Like a pharaoh on her back

Water shimmers on the rough concrete wall, the surface of which is moved by the wind. In the video, projected on the wall of Tate Modern, two lines of sand form the silhouette of a body. The sea of ​​the island of Key Biscanye runs through it, separating Florida and Cuba a few hundred kilometers from each other. The eight-minute film “Ochún” by the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta is part of the major retrospective at the Tate in London.

Right at the beginning, the video introduces a central motif of the artist: her escape as a young girl from Cuba into exile in America and the constant desire to connect with her origins. At the same time, the figure dissolving in the water refers to processes of spiritual transcendence and transformation. These themes appear again and again in her cross-genre art.

The video comes from her world-famous series “Silueta,” which Mendieta started in 1973 and which today includes around 200 works. At the beginning she worked with her body, later only with its silhouette and materials such as sand, water, flowers, feathers, tree branches, moss or fire. In one of her most famous photographs, “Imágen de Yágul”, which marks the beginning of this series, the artist lies on her back like a pharaoh, surrounded by stones and almost completely covered by white flowers. In the video “Alma, Silueta en Fuego” a silhouette burns out.

“Ana Mendieta.” Tate Modern, London, until January 27, 2027

Mendieta described her work as “Earth Body Art,” which focuses on the connection between body and earth. She consciously differentiated herself from land art artists such as Walter de Maria or Nancy Holt, who used existing landscapes as material and permanently changed them, sometimes on a gigantic scale. In Mendieta's work, humans are not the center and ruler of the earth, as in Western cultures, but rather part of it. In the video “Grass Breathing” you see a lawn that moves as if it were breathing. Only at second glance do you understand that Mendieta herself is lying under the green grass and is activating the ground with her breathing muscles.

Origin and identity are a recurring theme for Mendieta, who was born in Havana in 1948. When the artist returned to Cuba for the first time in 1981, her series of works “Esculturas Rupestres” was created in Havana. The artist carved Taíno goddesses, deities of the indigenous peoples of the West Indies, into the limestone caves of Jaruco Park. However, due to natural erosion and the changing use of the area, the ephemeral works are now only documented on film and photographs.

As poetic and mystical as many of her works are, others radically and unambiguously address violence against women. In the Super 8 film “Moffitt Building Piece” she documents how pedestrians walk past a front door that appears to be flowing with blood that she had previously distributed there. Passers-by walk past the alleged crime scene indifferently. The work is a response to a femicide at her university and is about violence against women behind closed doors. Mendieta saw herself as part of a second wave of feminism in the USA, set herself apart critically from the dominant white, bourgeois women's movement and also - like Audre Lorde - took into account the connections between racism and sexism.

A lot is said about the artist's work in the exhibition's wall texts. Her biography, however, only tells Tate incompletely. There is a lack of information about her reception history, the background to her exile and, above all, her tragic death at the age of just 36. On September 8, 1985, Mendieta fell from the 34th floor of a New York apartment building where she lived with her husband, the well-known sculptor Carl Andre. Her death was long made into a sensation and continues to dominate news coverage today. The decision to simply exclude parts of Mendieta's life is made by both the curators and the Estate Ana Mendieta, which manages her estate.

Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, Mendieta's niece and principal of the estate, explained in an interview with the New York Times that she wanted to redirect the narrative about the artist's death back to her work. This is now reflected in the London exhibition. That's smart, because her death should under no circumstances dominate her reception history. The retrospective is therefore a long-awaited return of Mendieta's art to the international stage.