I have been familiar with Ana Mendieta’s work for several years, and the announcement of an upcoming exhibition at the Tate Modern is, of course, very appealing.. Like many photographers, I had seen her images reproduced in books, catalogues, and on the walls of art schools. Yet nothing truly prepares you for encountering her work in person.
Because Ana Mendieta is not an artist you simply look at.
She is an artist you feel. Her photographs, films, and the traces of her performances seem to hover somewhere between appearance and disappearance.
Born in Cuba in 1948 and exiled to the United States at the age of twelve, Mendieta spent much of her life searching for a sense of belonging. Her work is permeated by themes of displacement, memory, identity, and a profound connection to nature. But nature, in her work, is never decorative. It becomes a refuge, a source, a spiritual territory.
It is in her celebrated Silueta Series that this quest finds its most powerful expression.
Mendieta pressed her body into the earth, drew her silhouette in the sand, shaped it with flowers, leaves, stones, or fire. Then she allowed the elements to take over. Rain erased it. Wind scattered it. The sea carried it away.
Photography then became essential.
Not as a final artwork in the traditional sense, but as testimony. As the memory of an action. As fragile evidence that a presence once existed in that place, only moments before.
Her work is deeply photographic in its very essence. Not because she used a camera, but because she explored what lies at the heart of photography itself: the trace.
Every photograph ultimately says the same thing: someone was here.
In Mendieta’s work, this idea reaches an almost primal form.
Her body often disappears from the image. What remains is an imprint. A contour. An absence transformed into presence.
What touches me most about her work is its absolute sincerity. Nothing feels calculated to impress or seduce. At a time when contemporary art can sometimes seem eager to create spectacle, Ana Mendieta worked with a handful of elemental forces: earth, water, fire, blood, and wind.
Her works seem to belong as much to the history of art as to the history of ancient rituals. They evoke pre-Columbian civilizations, Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions, and archaic mythologies. Yet they remain strikingly contemporary.
Today, as so many artists explore our relationship with the natural world, her work feels almost prophetic. She did not represent the landscape.
She became one with it.
Tate has wisely chosen to present not only her most iconic images, but also the films, documents, and lesser-known works that reveal the remarkable coherence of her artistic journey. We will discover an artist of extraordinary rigor, patiently building a personal visual language in which each work speaks to the next.
That coherence is striking.
In barely more than a decade, Ana Mendieta created a universe that is instantly recognizable. A universe where femininity is not proclaimed as a slogan but lived as an experience. Where exile becomes artistic material. Where nature becomes memory.
Of course, her tragic death still lingers in the background. The circumstances surrounding her passing in 1985 continue to provoke questions and debate. But it’s clear that this is not what matters most.
What matters are the works themselves.
That silhouette drawn on a beach before being erased by the tide.
That human form carved into the earth.
That flame outlining a body in the darkness.
That unique ability to speak of absence without ever surrendering to despair.
I have no doubt that at the Tate Modern, we will enjoy a peaceful experience amidst this astonishing work.
An encounter with an artist who, more than forty years after her death, continues to remind us that the most fragile traces are sometimes the ones that last the longest.
Grégory Herpe
Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
15 July 2026 – 17 Jan 2027
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