Ana Mendieta (1948–85) was an avant-garde artist who frequently dissolved the boundaries between photography, sculpture and film. But the forward-thinking tendencies of her art was always in productive tension with what interested her most: the four ancient elements themselves fire, earth, water, wind. ‘My work is basically in the tradition of a Neolithic art,’ she once said, an assertion perhaps best expressed in the Silueta series (1973–80), which began when Mendieta snuck into a grave in an archaeological site in Mexico and covered her own naked body with flowers. Throughout the series, which has become her best-known work, Mendieta marked the earth – by burning leaves or burying herself in the sand, for instance – with her body or its outline and photographed the results. They are among the highlights of this exhibition at Tate Modern, which brings together more than 100 other works – including films, installations and rarely seen paintings – to convey the breadth of her all-too-brief career (15 July–17 January 2027).
Find out more from the Tate’s website.
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