Tate Modern’s first exhibition dedicated to Ana Mendieta celebrates her sensual engagement with the natural world
Amah-Rose Abrams, Wallpaper*
July 2026
You may have heard of Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), but how much do you know about her art? Her multidisciplinary practice encompassed sculpture, film, performance, photography, painting and drawing, but she is best known for her ‘silueta’, or ‘earth-body’, works, in which she outlined her body in nature. More than 120 of Mendieta’s works are now on view in a new retrospective at Tate Modern in London (15 July 2026 – 17 January 2027), including a nude woman’s form in a tomb covered with sprigs of small white flowers, the flaming form of a body on a sandy landscape, and the shape of a body in a shoreline, being slowly eroded by the tide. The exhibition takes us through Mendieta’s practice, from her teenage years up until around 1984, exploring her whole body of work. […]