Ana Mendieta’s ‘Neolithic art’ recreated for major Tate Modern survey
Hannah Clugston, The Art Newspaper
July 2026
Ana Mendieta’s best-known series, Silueta Series (1973-80), is a collection of photographs and films that capture silhouettes of the artist’s body in nature: etched in the ground, buried among flowers or even aflame. Sometimes the Cuban American artist (1948-85) is present; other times there is a faint imprint of her body. They are momentary sculptures, temporarily marking Mendieta’s presence on earth.
In 1984, towards the end of her life, Mendieta began visiting Neolithic sites around Europe, including Mnajdra and Tarxien in Malta; Hadrian’s Villa, Cerveteri’s necropolis and Pompeii in Italy; and Newgrange in Ireland. All are places where traces of long-lost civilisations can still be felt and found carved in the ground. She began to see her ephemeral works as similar in nature, telling the journalist and art critic Channing Grey in 1984: “My work is basically in the tradition of a Neolithic art… I’m not interested in the formal qualities of my materials, but their emotional and sensual ones.” […]