Ana Mendieta was sent to the US as a child in 1961 as a result of her father’s political engagement. Her work is haunted by the exile’s sense of displacement. In her multidisciplinary art, Mendieta explored themes of feminism, ethnic identity, violence, life, death, place, and belonging. At its core lay the use of her own body. She was possibly the first to combine land art, body art, and performance – in what she called ‘earth-body’ sculptures: Silueta Series (1973-80). Since her death, Mendieta has been recognized with retrospectives at the New Museum, NYC, 1987; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Whitney Museum, NYC; Des Moines Art Center; Miami Art Museum (all 2004); Hayward Gallery, London, and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2013. Her experimental films garnered critical acclaim with the traveling exhibition Covered in Time and History, shown among others at the Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; UC Berkeley Art Museum; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; and Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015-2018). Mendieta’s works are in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, and MoMA in NYC, Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Tate, London.
