The cult female artist that is getting her biggest ever UK exhibition at Tate Modern this summer – here’s why it’s one of the most important shows happening in London in 2026

Among Ana Mendieta’s best-known photographs is of a woman lying across a rocky grave, flowers seeming to grow around, and even through, her skin. Provocative, beautiful art tied to tragedy is something of a Mendieta trademark. The artist’s work digs its claws deep into the dirt, inspiration sprouting twisted flowers from cracked earth, appealing to feminist scholars and floppy-fringed emos alike.

The Cuban-American artist’s work is often introduced alongside the nature of her suspicious death at 36, when she allegedly fell from the 34th floor of her Manhattan apartment in 1985. This truncated life means that her potential remains lost to time, her rep forever linked to her husband Carl Andre’s murder trial. 

Tate Modern wants to change all that. This summer (from July 15), the biggest ever UK exhibition of Mendieta’s work will open at the Bankside gallery with a host of pieces never before seen on these shores. 

A total of 150 Mendieta pieces will be on show at the Tate, including rarely seen drawings and restored film, with the exhibition pulling from her 1970s and 1980s works to tell a thematic and biographical story that keeps the natural world at its centre. 

Fans of Mendieta will likely best know her ‘earth-body’ works, which feature the artist’s body outlined with delicate flowers and scorched earth. The Cuban-born artist regularly manipulated elemental forces along with materials like moss and gunpowder, occasionally accessorised with animal hearts and handprints. Her earthy works combined with a more divine force as she started carving goddesses into rock and building them from piles of sand, what Mendieta called the Esculturas Rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures). 

While many Esculturas Rupestres were destroyed, Tate Modern is continuing Mendieta’s legacy through film, photographs and restaged installations. Curators will get a chance to test their green thumbs, too: this will be the first time Mendieta’s earth-body work has been recreated for an indoor gallery. Branches, soil, moss and stone will, quite literally, bring the outside in. 

Ana Mendieta will explore the artist’s legacy as a Cuban native, New York activist, Iowan teacher, artist and sculptor for a well-rounded look at an artist who has too often been defined by her unfortunate end. Overdue? Certainly. Worth a visit? Definitely. 

Ana Mendieta, July 15 2026-January 17 2026. Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG. Tickets.

Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern is one of Time Out’s 12 most highly anticipated exhibitions opening in London this year – here’s the full list, including Frida Kahlo, David Hockney, Tracey Emin and more.

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