Ana mendieta

Ana Mendieta, Silueta series, 1973 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection

“I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source.”

Sent alone from Havana to the United States as a child, Ana Mendieta spent her life trying to find her way back to the earth. In her Siluetas, she pressed the shape of her body into mud, sand, grass and flowers, or traced it in fire. Then she stepped away, and let nature take over: water filling the outline, wind scattering it, flames burning it down to ash.

What remains is not a fixed image of the body, but a passage. A body that leaves a trace, and a trace already becoming something else.

This is what moves us in her work: the body not as a finished form, but as something open, porous, constantly reshaped by what flows through it and around it. This is exactly what Les Passagées explore, project after project.

further reading: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/ana-mendieta
Ana Mendieta's major retrospective is on view at Tate Modern, London, until 17 January 2027.