Ana Mendieta

Galerie Nathalie Obadia is pleased to organize the first exhibition of Ana Mendieta's work in a gallery in France.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the trust and precious help of Mary Sabbatino, director of the Lelong Gallery in New York, who has done a great deal of work to make known the work of the artist, who tragically died in 1985 at the age of 37.
It seems clear today that the work of Ana Mendieta has influenced many contemporary artists such as Annette Messager, Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman and Marie-Ange Guilleminot. In France at the same time, another artist, Gina Pane, now deceased, also made her body speak like Ana Mendieta. Paul-Armand Gette also expresses the symbiosis of nature and sexuality. Femininity and sexuality are very present in his work with a unique relationship to nature, the mother earth, as well as to human origin. Nature and the female body represented by Ana Mendieta, are in emotional fusion celebrating the cycle of life and death. The eroticization of nature and its communion with the artist is the central theme of Ana Mendieta's work. Her body becomes the instrument of cosmic forces. Immersed in sand, mud, water or blood, the artist inscribes her silhouette on the ground, appropriating the elements from which she thus draws the magical properties.
Her performances and drawings often call upon rupestral signs, they explain her Afro-Cuban origins which it is interesting to see transposed to the United States where she worked and where she died.
With no other artifice than her body added to simple elements such as fire, earth, blood or an animal, Ana Mendieta was able to leave indelible traces of her actions in contemporary art.

A set of photographs of her actions and performances will be shown as well as a video and drawings.