Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Silhouettes in the Undergrowth

Ana Mendieta, Alma Silueta en Fuego, 1975.

Until Jan 5, 2025
Blvd. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 303, Granada, 11520 Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico

Ana Mendieta died in 1985, when she was only 34. In New York City, she fell from the window of her apartment on the 34th floor. Her husband, the minimalist sculptor Carl André, was the only other person in the apartment and neighbors heard the couple fighting. Push? Accident? Suicide? A judge acquitted André, but what happened is still murky. Despite her early death, the Cuban artist amassed a vast body of work. Mendieta was an accomplished sculptor, painter, and video artist. Her themes were feminism, violence, and identity. Many of her works draw from Afro-Cuban traditions, specifically, the ethic of reconnecting with the earth. “Through my earth/body sculptures,” she once said, “I become an extension of nature, and nature becomes an extension of my body.” This exhibition features art by Mendieta and five other Latin American artists of different generations—Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Minia Biabiany, Nohemí Pérez, Vivian Caccuri, and Vivian Suter. The subject is the relationship of landscapes and the human body. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: © Ana Mendieta/Artists Rights Society (ARS), Nueva York, SOMAAP/Mexico/2024