Ana Mendieta’s Return to Tate Modern
In her first major UK exhibition in over a decade, the ground-breaking multidisciplinary artist fuses body, land, and ritual to redefine the nature of memory and belonging, bringing together over 120 works spanning sculpture, film, photography, and site-specific installation. Arranged thematically through symbolic geography, the exhibition traces the lineage of a practice that shattered traditional boundaries between the body, performance, and the natural world.
To understand Mendieta’s search for connection is to understand the ache of displaced roots. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948, Mendieta was exiled to the United States at just 12 years old under Operation Pedro Pan, separated from her family, her language, and her homeland. This profound rupture became the emotional bedrock of her life’s work.
Ana Mendieta, Imágen de Yágul 1973. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. DACS 2026. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery and Alison Jacques, London
Her artistic practice became a vehicle for reclamation; a way to mend the space between human existence and the soil beneath her feet. In her powerful film Ochún (1981), a sand-sculpted silhouette lies on the shore of Key Biscayne, Florida, channeling the waters that lie between the United States and Cuba. Named after the Yoruba deity of love, rivers, and fertility, the work embodies Mendieta’s ongoing dialogue with Afro-Cuban traditions, Taíno cosmology, and Neolithic forms.
When she returned to Cuba throughout the early 1980s, she carved her Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures) directly into the limestone walls of the Jaruco caves, leaving physical glyphs of the sacred feminine embedded in the landscape.
Ana Mendieta, Untitled 1972. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by DACS
At the core of the exhibition lies Mendieta’s defiance of art as a commodity. While mainstream land art of the 1970s often tried to dominate the landscape, Mendieta treated the earth as a collaborator. In addition to rare paintings, bark-paper Amategrams, and late studio sculptures crafted from earth, binder, and scorched tree trunks in Rome, the survey offers rare opportunities to experience the living, impermanent elements of Mendieta’s practice.
Mendieta’s work reminds us that the body is not separate from the soil, it is an echo of it. At a moment when our relationship with land, ecology, and memory feels increasingly fractured, her visceral vision offers a profound grounding.
Ana Medieta’s exhibition at Tate Modern is open until 17th January 2027.