A Rousing Tate Modern Retrospective Refuses to Reduce Ana Mendieta to a Tragic Figure

Tate Modern’s major retrospective of Ana Mendieta foregrounds works made during her returns to Cuba beginning in 1980, after she fled the country as a child refugee in 1961. The exhibition opens with “Esculturas Rupestres” (1981), limestone carvings made in Cuba’s La Escaleras de Jaruco nature reserve, and includes her film “Ochún” (1981), which shows waves washing over an earth outline of her body. The show minimizes biographical detail and instead emphasizes Mendieta’s themes of time, exile, and the ephemeral body, including her “Silhuetas” series (circa 1973–80) documenting temporary imprints of her form in mud, snow, flowers, and sand. ARTnews characterizes the curatorial approach as resisting the tendency to define Mendieta primarily through tragedy and instead presenting the work on its own terms.

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