Ana Mendieta, the Body Artist
Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
July 2026
Before Ana Mendieta, the Cuban American artist, became a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, in 1983, she’d never had a studio of her own. Five years earlier, as an ambitious twenty-nine-year-old, she’d moved to New York City in the depths of winter, and soon rented a poky, dark apartment on the ground floor of a building in Greenwich Village. “Desolate” was how she described the place. She scavenged planks of wood for shelves and a table, and she carved out a workspace for herself beneath a loft bed, which had a mattress that she’d dragged in from the street. […]