Artist

Ana Mendieta

Born in Havana, 1948

 
Born in Havana, Cuba, Ana Mendieta was exiled from her native country in 1961, just before the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution. Much of Mendieta’s work expresses the pain and rupture of cultural displacement, and resonates with visceral metaphors of death, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. A seminal figure in feminist art practice of the 1970s, Mendieta devised an emblematic, at times mythical female iconography.
In 1972 Mendieta began making ritualistic performances and haunting earth works, in which she immersed or inscribed her own body within nature. Blood, fire, water, and other natural elements are essential to her highly personal, often mystical vocabulary. Burial and regeneration are recurrent themes. Mendieta’s ephemeral “earth-body sculptures” and provocative performances were documented through film, video and photography. Whether painting her body with blood, or burning, carving and inscribing female symbols into the landscape, as in her Silueta series, Mendieta’s work is infused with enormous power and poetry.
Over a fourteen-year period Mendieta made more than seventy films and videotapes that document her powerful body-based performances and landscape sculptures. A selection of these works has now been made available.
Ana Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948, and died in 1985. She studied at the University of Iowa, where she created many of her early performance works. Mendieta’s performances were also held at Franklin Furnace, New York; Oaxaca, Mexico; Belgrade and Antwerp. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Bronx Museum, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris. One-person exhibitions by Mendieta were held at A.I.R. Gallery, New York; Museu de Arte Contemporãnea, São Paolo, Brazil; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, and Primo Piano, Rome. Following her death, retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Pat Hearn Gallery, New York; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; and Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland. In 1997 Mendieta was the subject of a major retrospective organized by the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain.

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Rethinking Nature
Over 40 Italian and international artists and collectives from 22 countries come together to reflect the role of contemporary art practice in addressing our environmental challenges.
17 Dec 2021 - 02 May 2022
Museo MADRE
Naples
Exhibitions
Ana Mendieta: She Got Love
Ana Mendieta. She Got Love, is a large-scale European retrospective devoted to the Cuban-born American...
30 Jan 2013 - 16 Jun 2013
Castello di Rivoli
Turin
Exhibitions
You’ve Got to Know the Rules…to Break Them
Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz have selected a group of artists from their personal collection who have been...
01 Dec 2015 - 08 Oct 2016
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will present Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta from...
28 Feb 2016 - 03 Jul 2016
Miami
Exhibitions
Cuba – Ficción y Fantasía
Cuba – Ficción y fantasía [Cuba – Fiction and Fantasy] presents around 130 works belonging...
12 Sep 2015 - 13 Dec 2015
Casa Daros
Rio de Janeiro
Exhibitions
Prière de Toucher/ The Touch of Art
Museum Tinguely is pursuing the project of an exhibition series with which it sheds light on the complex...
12 Feb 2016 - 16 May 2016
Museum Tinguely
Basel
Exhibitions
Ana Mendieta Solo Show
Galleria Raffaella Cortese hosts the second solo show of Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta. In a brief yet...
10 Mar 2016 - 11 May 2016
Raffaella Cortese
Milan
Exhibitions
Cuba. Tattoing History
The PAC in Milan explores foreign cultures through contemporary art, drawing for the 2016 a guideline...
05 Jul 2016 - 12 Sep 2016
Milan
Exhibitions
Progressive Praxis
The De la Cruz collection inaugurates its 2017 program with the group exhibition “Progressive Praxis”. The...
29 Nov 2016 - 29 Nov 2017
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Life World. Photography from the CIAC Collection
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents Life World, a selection of photographic works from the Collection...
27 Feb 2017 - 30 Apr 2017
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
Turin
Exhibitions
Force and Form
“Force and Form” brings together a group of artists whose practices recognize a shift in visual culture...
01 Dec 2017 - 30 Nov 2018
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Mulheres Radicais: arte latino-americana, 1960-1985 (Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985)
Curated by British Venezuelan art historian and curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Argentine researcher Andrea...
18 Aug 2018 - 19 Nov 2018
São Paulo
Exhibitions
Ana Mendieta: Covered in Time and History
This is the first museum exhibition dedicated to the film works of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta...
16 Oct 2018 - 27 Jan 2019
Jeu de Paume
Paris
Exhibitions
More / Less
More / Less groups works by several international contemporary artists, produced during the last thirty...
01 Dec 2018 - 30 Sep 2019
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Las Superocheras
The group exhibition brings together experiences by 22 women artists who present films in Super-8 format,...
08 Nov 2018 - 17 Mar 2019
Mexico City
Exhibitions
Podría Ser (Una Flecha): Una Lectura De La Colección Jumex
Taking as starting point Walter Benjamin’s reflections, the exhibition gathers a group of women...
29 Nov 2018 - 31 Mar 2019
Mexico City
Exhibitions
Five Artists: Sites Encountered
“Five Artists: Sites Encountered” brings together a series of work by international artists—including...
07 Jun 2019 - 20 Oct 2019
M+ Pavilion
Hong Kong
Exhibitions
Where the Oceans Meet
The group exhibition “Where the Oceans Meet“, housed at the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade...
26 May 2019 - 12 Jan 2020
Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College
Miami
Exhibitions
From Day to Day
De la Cruz Collection‘s collective 2019-2020 exhibition is titled “From Day to Day” and features...
01 Oct 2019 - 30 Nov 2020
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
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