This summer time, museums throughout Europe have lined up a stellar programme of exhibitions to dive into as soon as the attraction of solar and sea begins to fade. From Amsterdam and Athens, to Basel, Cologne, and Oslo, establishments are presenting exhibits that unfold throughout complete buildings, spill into historic websites, and place up to date works in dialogue with their collections.
Quite a few these are main travelling exhibitions, stopping in Europe over the summer time months, together with Cecilia Vicuña on the Irish Museum of Trendy Artwork, Dublin; Yayoi Kusama at Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and Ruth Asawa on the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Others coincide with key moments within the artwork calendar: in Venice, Marina Abramović’s exhibition on the Gallerie dell’Accademia opens in the course of the Venice Biennale, whereas in Basel, shows by Pierre Huyghe at Fondation Beyeler and Helen Frankenthaler at Kunstmuseum Basel run alongside Artwork Basel.
Heading to the continent? Listed below are 18 must-see exhibitions to catch throughout Europe this summer time.
Cecilia Vicuna at Irish Museum of Trendy Artwork (till 5 July 2026)
Cecilia Vicuña, Llaverito (Blue) (2019, after the misplaced unique 1979 work)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin.)
The primary solo exhibition in Eire by Chilean artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña – now in her late seventies – brings collectively a long time of labor alongside a serious new fee.
Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey centres on Vicuña’s exploration of ancestry, ecology, and interconnectedness, rooted in her 2006 return to Eire along with her associate, the poet James O’Hern. Born in Santiago in 1948 right into a household of artists, Vicuña was finding out on the Slade College of Wonderful Artwork when the 1973 navy coup led by Augusto Pinochet compelled her into exile. Lots of her early works had been misplaced or destroyed throughout this era. The breadth of labor she has produced since displays the resilience and adaptableness of her observe.
On the core of the exhibition is Aran Quipu (2025), a monumental, site-specific set up created with native makers utilizing wool from Irish sheep. Thick, knotted strands grasp from the ceiling, drawing on the traditional Andean quipu system whereas echoing the symbolic patterns of Aran knitwear. The work anchors the exhibition as a meditation on survival, craft, and shared histories. Elsewhere, Vicuña presents a variety of works, together with work, poetry, movie, and sound.
Following its Dublin presentation, the exhibition will journey to Whitechapel Gallery, the place it will likely be on view from 7 October 2026 to 14 February 2027.
Danh Vo at Stedelijk, Amsterdam (14 February – 2 August)
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presents πνεῦμα (Ἔλισσα), a serious solo exhibition by Danh Vo, marking the artist’s return to the museum following certainly one of his first institutional exhibits there in 2008.
The exhibition brings collectively sculptures created from supplies similar to wooden, marble, and copper with fragments of antiques, spiritual relics, and architectural parts. These embody sections of bigger monuments and devotional objects that Vo reworks or repositions, usually combining them with archival pictures, letters, and private paperwork. Most of the works draw on histories linked to the Vietnam Battle, Catholicism, and his household’s departure from Vietnam in 1979, utilizing these supplies to hint how political and cultural forces form particular person lives.
Born in Vietnam in 1975 and raised in Denmark, Vo’s work attracts on private historical past, weaving collectively references to the Vietnam Battle, his household’s departure from Vietnam in 1979, and his youth as an artwork scholar by means of archival materials and located objects. His observe strikes between private expertise and broader historic narratives, and on this exhibition unfolds by means of rigorously staged relationships between objects, the place connections between reminiscence, perception, and energy take form.
In September, Vo returns to New York with an exhibition at White Dice, his first within the metropolis since Take My Breath Away on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2018.
(Picture credit score: Danh Vo)
Yayoi Kusama at Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1 March – 2 August 2026)
Kusama’s yellow and black tenatacles
(Picture credit score: © YAYOI KUSAMA Courtesy of Ota Wonderful Arts. Picture: Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischem Bildarchiv, Marc Weber)
To mark its fiftieth anniversary, Museum Ludwig presents a serious survey of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Spanning greater than 300 works, the exhibition traces Kusama’s seven-decade profession, from her early childhood drawings made round 1934 to newly commissioned Infinity Mirror Room created for the museum’s largest gallery. Whereas the present follows earlier shows on the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, and precedes its subsequent cease on the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Cologne’s model introduces a number of new parts and large-scale installations. These embody Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Present (1963), Kusama’s first immersive set up, and I’m Right here however Nothing (2000–), a home inside remodeled by fluorescent dots beneath black mild. On the museum’s roof terrace, brightly painted bronze flowers make their exhibition debut.
Throughout portray, sculpture, set up, and archival materials, the present brings collectively Kusama’s defining motifs – polka dots, pumpkins, and infinity nets – whereas additionally revisiting lesser-seen works from the Fifties. The exhibition continues on the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from 11 September 2026 to 17 January 2027.
Rothko in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (14 March – 23 August 2026)
(Picture credit score: Rothko)
A grasp of American fashionable artwork, Mark Rothko is the topic of a serious exhibition in Florence, curated by his son Christopher Rothko, and curator Elena Guena.
Bringing collectively greater than 70 works from main worldwide establishments, together with New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork and Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, alongside Tate and Centre Pompidou, the exhibition traces Rothko’s profession from early figurative work to his signature colour-field works. Drawings and research for main commissions, together with the Seagram Murals, are additionally on view.
At its core is Rothko’s relationship to Florence. He first visited the town in 1950 and was deeply affected by Fra Angelico’s frescoes at San Marco and Michelangelo’s structure on the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana – -encounters that may form his later work.
That dialogue is introduced into the current by means of two satellite tv for pc installations throughout the town. At San Marco, a small group of work is proven in dialog with Angelico’s frescos contained in the monks’ cells. On the Laurentian Library, works are put in in Michelangelo’s dramatic vestibule, an area that had a long-lasting impression on Rothko and knowledgeable the emotional depth he pursued in his personal work.
The exhibition continues Palazzo Strozzi’s programme beneath director Arturo Galasino, which has introduced main up to date figures similar to Tracey Emin, Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson to Florence.
Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective at Guggenheim, Bilbao (19 March – 13 September 2026)
Artist Ruth Asawa making wire sculptures, California, United States, November 1954; picture: Nat Farbman/The LIFE Image Assortment/Shutterstock; paintings: © 2026 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., courtesy David Zwirner.
A pioneering determine in postwar American artwork, Ruth Asawa is the topic of a serious retrospective at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, tracing a six-decade …
Bringing collectively round 300 works, the exhibition spans the complete breadth of Asawa’s observe, from her signature suspended looped-wire sculptures to nature-inspired tied-wire items, in addition to clay and bronze solid sculptures, paper-folded works, and a wide array of work, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. On the core of the exhibition are the intricate wire types for which she is greatest identified – delicate, hanging types created from looped wire, usually formed into bulbous, nested constructions that solid shifting shadows throughout the partitions and ground.
Born in California in 1926 to Japanese immigrant dad and mom, Asawa was forcibly incarcerated in the course of the Second World Battle. She later studied at Black Mountain School, the place its experimental ethos formed her observe. Based mostly in San Francisco from 1949, she turned a number one advocate for arts schooling and public artwork.
Organised in partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Trendy Artwork, and Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York, that is the primary main posthumous survey of her work.
Simon Fujiwara at Mudam Luxembourg (20 March – 23 August 2026)
Exhibition view, Simon Fujiwara: A Entire New World, Mudam Luxembourg.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of the artist. Gio Marconi, Milan; TARO NASU, Tokyo; Dvir Gallery Paris, Tel Aviv, Brussels and Esther Schipper Berlin/Paris/Seoul. Picture Andrea Rossetti © Mudam Luxembourg.)
Japanese-British artist Simon Fujiwara presents his largest exhibition up to now at Mudam Luxembourg, a mid-career survey spanning almost 20 years of labor. Developed over greater than two years, the exhibition brings collectively key tasks from throughout his observe alongside current works.
A Entire New World transforms the museum into an immersive atmosphere impressed by the scenography of theme parks, reflecting Fujiwara’s curiosity in spectacle, identification, and up to date picture tradition. Working throughout portray, movie, efficiency, animation, and storytelling, the exhibition presents a broad view of his multifaceted strategy.
Highlights embody early works that probe the development of identification, in addition to large-scale installations similar to Hope Home, which explores the legacy of Anne Frank. Newer tasks introduce Who the Bær, a cartoon character with no fastened identification, used to look at authorship, branding, and the fluid nature of the self.
A central work within the exhibition is Joanne (2016–21), a video portrait of Fujiwara’s former schoolteacher, who resigned after personal pictures of her had been circulated with out consent. Revisited years later by means of a collaborative course of, the mission makes use of the language of promoting and media to reframe her story, shifting it from scandal to certainly one of company and self-representation.
Throughout the exhibition, Fujiwara attracts on the aesthetics of leisure and promoting to replicate on a fast-moving, image-driven world.
Niki Kanagini at EMΣΤ, Athens (2 April – 8 November 2026)
Portrait of the Artist in Her Studio, c. 1975
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of gallery)
A key determine in post-war Greek artwork, Niki Kanagini is the topic of a serious retrospective at Nationwide Museum of Up to date Artwork Athens (EMΣΤ), providing a renewed take a look at her four-decade profession.
Spanning work from the Nineteen Seventies onwards, the exhibition brings collectively a variety of media, from large-scale tapestries – first proven on the Lausanne Biennale in 1971 – to immersive, participatory installations. The Athens present reintroduces the crucial dimensions of her observe, together with her early engagement with modernism, her curiosity within the relationship between utilized and positive arts, and her use of writing as a visible and structural factor.
Born in Alexandroupouli in northern Greece in 1933, Kanagani studied on the École Cantoale de Dessin et d’Artwork Appliqué in Lausanne and the Athens College of Wonderful Artwork earlier than persevering with her coaching at London’s Central College of Arts and Design. Her early work drew on Bauhaus rules and abstraction, earlier than she turned to tapestry-making, which turned central to her observe.
Alexander Calder at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (15 April – 16 July 2026)
Alexander Calder, Dispersed Objects with Brass Gong, 1948. Brass, sheet metallic, wire, and paint. 48.3 x 167.6 cm
(Picture credit score: Shirley Household Calder Assortment, promised Reward to the Seattle Artwork Museum. © 2026 Calder Basis, New York / ADAGP, Paris. Picture courtesy of Calder Basis, New York / Artwork Useful resource, New York)
The Fondation Louis Vuitton celebrates the centenary of Alexander Calder’s arrival in France with one of the vital complete exhibitions ever devoted to the American sculptor, identified for his hanging mobiles and kinetic works.
Spanning almost half a century, Rêver en Équilibre traces Calder’s profession from the late 1920 – starting along with his Cirque Calder performances – to the monumental works of the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies that expanded his observe into the general public house. Bringing collectively round 300 works, the exhibition consists of his iconic mobiles and stabiles, alongside wire portraits, carved wood figures, work, drawings, and jewelry conceived as small-scale sculptures.
One of the crucial distinctive works on view is Cirque Calder, returning to Paris for the primary time in 15 years because of a serious mortgage from the Whitney Museum of Artwork. Developed after the artist’s arrival in Paris, it contains greater than 100 small figures created from wire, cork, and wooden – acrobats, animals, ringmasters – which Calder would carry out himself in entrance of reside audiences. Amongst these fortunate sufficient to have watched this spectacle had been main figures of the avant-garde, together with Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, and Piet Mondrian.
Occupying all the museum – and, for the primary time, its surrounding grounds – the exhibition locations Calder’s works throughout the wider avant-garde, his mates Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso, whereas pictures by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, and others seize the artist at work and in life.
Helen Frankenthaler at Kunstmuseum Basel (18 April – 23 August 2026)
Frankenthaler in her studio on East 83rd Avenue, New York, 1974;
(Picture credit score: Picture: Alexander Liberman © J. Paul Getty Belief, Los Angeles; Paintings © 2025 Helen Frankenthaler Basis, Inc. / ProLitteris, Zurich)
Helen Frankenthaler, whose improvements reshaped postwar summary portray, is the topic of a complete survey at Kunstmuseum Basel. Spanning greater than six a long time of labor, the exhibition marks the most important presentation of her work in Europe up to now and her first institutional solo present in Switzerland.
Central to the exhibition is her improvement of the soak-stained method, wherein thinned paint is poured straight onto unprimed canvas, permitting color to unfold and soak into the floor. The strategy produced expansive, fluid compositions and performed a key function within the emergence of what turned generally known as Colour Area portray in the USA.
For the primary time, her work are hung in direct dialogue with works that formed her considering, from the Renaissance by means of to modernism. As a scholar at Bennington School, Vermont, Frankenthaler intently studied artists similar to Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, and Henri Matisse, later deepening this engagement by means of travels to Europe, the place she encountered painters similar to Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, and Claude Monet.
The exhibition runs alongside Artwork Basel, held within the Swiss metropolis from 18–21 June 2026.
Summer season Programme at LUMA Arles, together with Verena Paravel, Gerhard Richter, Camille Henrot, amongst others
(Picture credit score: Picture credit score: Adrian Deweerdt.)
Every summer time, LUMA Arles – the humanities centre based by Swiss collector Maya Hoffmann – presents a wide-ranging programme of exhibitions throughout its campus, bringing collectively up to date artwork, movie, and structure. For 2026, a brand new cycle opens on 1 Could, adopted by a second sequence on 4 July.
Among the many highlights is Delta, a serious new movie fee by Verena Paravel, developed as a part of her ongoing mission Cosmofonia. Filmed within the Rhône river delta, the work focuses on the delicate ecosystem of the Camargue, tracing the customarily unseen lives of the species that inhabit its wetlands.
Additionally on view is a presentation of Gerhard Richter’s Overpainted Images, a key physique of labor wherein the artist applies layers of oil paint straight onto snapshots, disrupting the picture and blurring the road between illustration and abstraction. Alongside this, LUMA presents the European premiere of Within the Veins, a brand new movie by Camille Henrot, exploring the emotional and cultural programs that form particular person expertise.
Additional exhibitions embody the sixth chapter of the Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives, devoted to Zaha Hadid, bringing collectively her early work and notebooks, in addition to a brand new fee by Julianknxx.
Marina Abramovich at Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice (6 Could – 19 October 2026)
(Picture credit score: ©Yu Jieyu)
Serbian efficiency artist Marina Abramović presents a serious exhibition on the Gallerie dell’ Accademie, marking her eightieth birthday and coinciding with the 61st Venice Biennale.
Remodeling Vitality is a landmark mission, with Abramović turning into the primary residing girl artist to be honoured with a solo exhibition on the establishment. It additionally marks the primary time a up to date present extends into the museum’s everlasting assortment, inserting her work in dialogue with Venetian Renaissance masterpieces.
The exhibition brings collectively iconic works from throughout Abramović’s profession, together with Rhythm 0 (1974), her six-hour endurance efficiency, and Balkan Baroque (1997), the work that earned her the Golden Lion on the Venice Biennale, wherein she spent days scrubbing piles of bloodied animal bones in response to the violence of the Yugoslav wars.
On the centre of the present are Abramović’s ‘Transitory Objects’, sculptural installations created from stone and crystals that invite guests to sit down, lie, or stand, activating what she describes as ‘vitality transmission.’ Elsewhere, Pietà (with Ulay) (1983), {a photograph} of Abramović cradling the physique of her former associate Ulay in her lap, in dialogue with Titian’s Pietà (c. 1575–76), marking the 450th anniversary of the Renaissance portray.
Mrinalini Mukherjee at Hepworth Wakefield, Leeds (23 Could – 1 November 2026)
(Picture credit score: Tate: Introduced by Amrita Jhaveri 2013. Picture: © Tate. Courtesy of Mrinalini Mukherjee Basis.)
A serious retrospective at The Hepworth Wakefield celebrates the work of Indian artist Mrinalini Mukherjee, bringing collectively sculpture, drawing, and works on paper from throughout a four-decade profession.
The exhibition locations Mukherjee’s work alongside that of an early era of contemporary Indian and Bangladeshi sculptors, together with her mom Leela Mukherjee, Meera Mukherjee, Novera Ahmed, and Pilloo Pochkhanawala, foregrounding a shared historical past of modernism that has usually been ignored in Western narratives.
On the centre of the exhibition are her monumental fibre sculptures, similar to larger-than-life types made by twisting, knotting, and weaving dyed hemp into dense, bodily constructions. Utilizing the standard strategy of macramé, Mukherjee remodeled an unconventional materials into sculptural works that recommend each plant-like and bodily types.
The exhibition additionally consists of her later works in ceramic and bronze, alongside drawings, etchings, and watercolours, tracing the evolution of a observe formed by nature, Indian sculptural traditions, and modernist experimentation.
Pierre Huyghe at Fondation Beyeler, Basel (24 Could – 13 September 2026)
(Picture credit score: Movie nonetheless, Commissioned by LAS Artwork Basis and Hartwig Basis. © Pierre Huyghe, represented by ProLitteris (CH) / ADAGP (FR))
The work of French artist Pierre Huyghe calls for house and manufacturing – situations effectively suited to the Fondation Beyeler – extensively considered one of many main museums for up to date artwork.
Conceived particularly for the museum, the exhibition invitations guests into Huyghe’s shifting and sometimes unpredictable universe, the place fiction and actuality constantly blur. Working throughout movie, sculpture, and set up, he creates environments that evolve over time, bringing collectively newly commissioned works alongside key items from current years.
His current work, together with his transformation of Punta della Dogana in the course of the 2024 Venice Biennale, the place guests moved by means of darkened, labyrinthine areas the place pathways had been unclear and shifting pictures appeared unexpectedly, creating a way of displacement and uncertainty.
One such instance is Human Masks (2014), a movie set in post-disaster Fukushima, wherein a macaque dressed as a younger woman strikes by means of an deserted restaurant. Shifting between human and animal behaviour, the determine produces an unsettling impact, echoing Huyghe’s curiosity in unstable realities and shifting identities.
Coinciding with Artwork Basel, the exhibition is introduced throughout the Renzo Piano-designed Fondation, house to a world-renowned assortment together with works by Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Ewa Juszkiewicz at Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (26 Could – 6 September 2026)
(Picture credit score: Non-public assortment. © Ewa Juszkiewicz)
The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza presents a solo exhibition of works by Polish painter Ewa Juszkiewicz, organised as a part of its programme dedicated to the gathering of Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Bringing collectively simply over 20 work – many drawn from current our bodies of labor – the exhibition focuses on her reinterpretation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European portraiture, reframing the visible language of classical portray and its beliefs of female magnificence.
Juszkiewicz, born in 1984 in Gdańsk, works from portraits of feminine sitters, conserving their compositions intact whereas eradicating the face and changing it with dense preparations of braided hair, material, or natural types. By altering these pictures, she reveals how representations of girls in European portray have been formed by beliefs of magnificence and decorum, recasting them in a up to date context.
Additionally on view is a serious exhibition of the Sevillian painter and sculptor Carmen Laffón, and following {that a} presentation of Kenny Scharf, a central determine within the New York artwork scene of the Eighties.
Nari Ward at DESTE Basis Challenge House, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece (23 June – 31 October 2026)
(Picture credit score: © Nari Ward Studio. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London. Picture by Axel Dupeux)
Every summer time, the DESTE Basis Challenge House Slaughterhouse on the Greek island of Hydra invitations a single artist to create a site-specific exhibition. For 2026, Jamaican-American artist Nari Ward presents Till That Day.
Identified for his large-scale sculptural installations from discarded supplies gathered all through his neighbourhood of Harlem, Ward reworks on a regular basis objects into compositions that deal with questions of race, client tradition, and group. For this exhibition, he turns his consideration to the African diaspora in Greece, exploring histories of displacement alongside the cultural contributions of Afro-Greek communities.
Developed particularly for the Slaughterhouse, the mission features a new efficiency that includes musician Aggelos Aggelou and different Afro-Greek artists, responding to Haile Selassie I (Emperor of Ethiopia, 1930–1974) and his 1963 deal with to the United Nations. The exhibition’s title is drawn from the speech, later echoed in Bob Marley’s track ‘Battle’ (1976), which displays its name for solidarity throughout nationwide and racial boundaries.
Set throughout the former slaughterhouse overlooking the Aegean Sea, the exhibition continues DESTE Basis’s long-running summer time programme on Hydra, established by the Greek Cypriot industrialist and artwork collector Dakis Joannou. Since 2009, the Slaughterhouse has hosted a collection of site-specific tasks by main up to date artists, together with Andra Ursuţa (2025), George Rental (2024), and Maurizio Cattelan (2010).
Lucian Freud – Drawing into Portray at Louisiana Museum of Trendy Artwork (11 June – 27 September 2026)
(Picture credit score: © The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2026 / Bridgeman Photos, Lent by a non-public assortment)
The Louisiana Museum of Trendy Artwork presents Drawing into Portray, an exhibition of Lucian Freud that explores the connection between his works on paper and his work, organised in collaboration with the Nationwide Portrait Gallery.
Spanning from the Nineteen Thirties onwards, the exhibition opens with a uncommon group of early materials, together with childhood drawings, sketchbooks, letters, and unfinished works, lots of that are proven publicly for the primary time. Early works on paper embody Portrait of a Younger Man (1944), drawn in black crayon and chalk. In complete, the show brings collectively 48 sketchbooks alongside preparatory research and extra acquainted work.
The exhibition locations specific emphasis on Freud’s observe as a draughtsman. Working in pencil, pen, ink, charcoal, and etching, his drawings return repeatedly to the identical faces and our bodies, testing and refining his manner of seeing.
By exhibiting drawings alongside work, the exhibition reveals how Freud returned to drawing as a manner of finding out and transforming his topics over time.
Beatriz Gonzalez at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (12 June – 11 October 2026)
(Picture credit score: Picture credit score – Barbican Artwork Gallery, David Parry © Beatriz González)
The Astrup Fearnley Museet presents a serious retrospective of Colombian artist Beatriz González (1932–2026), bringing collectively greater than 150 works spanning six a long time. The exhibition arrives in Oslo following its presentation on the Barbican Centre.
Drawing on an intensive archive of pictures – from Outdated Grasp reproductions to newspaper pictures of crime, battle, and political life – González examined how such pictures form perceptions of energy and violence in Colombia. Shifting between artwork historical past and mass media, she reworked acquainted visible materials to replicate how these pictures are circulated and understood.
Born in Bucaramanga in 1932, González developed her observe in Colombia from the Sixties, working throughout portray, printmaking, furnishings, and set up. Identified in Colombia as la maestra for her affect as each an artist and instructor, she died in Bogotá in 2026, shortly earlier than the retrospective opened on the Barbican Centre.
Throughout the exhibition are works based mostly on Colombian press imagery, together with her repeated work of the couple who died on the Sisga dam. These are proven alongside prints of violent deaths and painted furnishings – beds, tables, and cupboards – that includes spiritual and political figures. Later works embody tasks similar to Auras Anónimas (2007–09), the place repeated silhouettes of figures carrying our bodies replicate on the lengthy aftermath of political violence.
Ana Mendieta at Tate Trendy, London (15 July 2026 – 17 January 2027)
(Picture credit score: © The Property of Ana Mendieta Assortment, LLC. Licensed by Artist Rights Society (ARS),New York / DACS,2026 / Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery and Alison Jacques, London.)
The Tate Trendy presents a serious exhibition of Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), bringing collectively greater than 150 works and marking the primary large-scale survey of her observe within the UK in over a decade.
Working throughout sculpture, movie, and images, Mendieta is greatest identified for her ‘earth-body’ works, wherein she traced the define of her personal physique into the panorama utilizing elemental supplies similar to earth, hearth, water, and vegetation. These interventions explored the connection between the physique and the pure world, in addition to concepts of presence, absence, and impermanence.
Born in Havana, Mendieta was despatched to the USA on the age of 12 following the Cuban Revolution, an expertise of displacement that formed her work. All through her profession, she returned to websites throughout the Americas and Europe, drawing on archaeology, ritual, and pre-Columbian cultures to reconnect with place and origin.
On the centre of the exhibition is the Silueta Sequence (1973–80), wherein Mendieta carved, burned, or assembled her physique’s define into landscapes, documented by means of pictures and movie. These are proven alongside a bunch of newly remastered movies, many introduced within the UK for the primary time, early performances, and later sculptural works made in Rome, together with earth-based ground items and her tree-trunk set up La Jungla (Totem Grove) (1985), in addition to restaged installations that convey her ephemeral works into the gallery.
