Next month, Tate Modern will present a major retrospective of the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (1983–1985 Fellow), the first comprehensive exhibition of her work in the United Kingdom in more than a decade. The show will prominently feature Mendieta’s time in Rome, and the Academy has lent the work Pietre/Foglie (Roma: Bulla, 1984), an artist’s book she created during her residency.
“For the past twelve years I have been carrying on a dialogue between the female body and landscape,” Mendieta wrote in her application for the Fellowship in Sculpture. During her time in Rome, she focused on creating larger sculptural works that marked a turning point in her practice, which had until then been centered on photographic records and performative actions. In Rome, Mendieta had a studio for the first time, a key factor in the new direction of her practice-based work.
Her siluetas sculptural series, made of earth and gunpowder, was first developed in her Academy studio and displayed for the first time during the annual Fellows’ final exhibition. A native Spanish speaker, Mendieta quickly learned Italian and adopted playful signatures while in Rome, “Itali-Ana” and “Rom-Ana.” Immersing herself fully in Roman cultural life, she collaborated with Italian makers and artists such as Nunzio di Stefano and Litografia Bulla, and exhibited locally at Galleria Primo Piano and AAM Galleria. Mendieta was fascinated by ancient sites and found at the Academy a vibrant community of scholars, archaeologists, and writers.
The exhibition, which opens on July 15, brings together more than 150 works, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, films, and installations, among them a number of sculptures created in the mid-1980s. It will be on view until January 17.
David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis at White Cube
An exhibition at White Cube in New York closed earlier this month, reuniting two influential artists—David Hammons (1993 Fellow) and Jannis Kounellis—whose friendship and artistic dialogue began at the American Academy in Rome while Hammons was in residence researching traces of Black ancestry in the city.
The White Cube exhibition referenced Hammons/Kounellis, an exhibition held in the gardens of Villa Aurelia in 1994. Curated by arts liaison Martha Boyden, it brought together David Hammons, who had been a Fellow the previous year, and Jannis Kounellis, one of the leading figures of Arte Povera.
That collaboration marked the first and only time the two artists showed together. They chose to present their work in two large military tents, referencing the Balkan Wars unfolding on the other side of the Mediterranean. Both created site-specific works that emerged from process-based engagements with materials and harnessed the power of conceptual and political gestures. The White Cube exhibition revisited that encounter and their interconnected lives thereafter through works spanning the 1990s and 2000s.
During his time at the Academy, Hammons was deeply inspired by the materiality of Rome and its rich cultural scene. Beyond meeting Kounellis, he also formed connections with artists Bruna Esposito, Cindy Sherman, and Michel Auder. His friendship with Kounellis, in particular, endured long after Hammons returned to New York. In 2016, just a year before Kounellis's death, Kounellis contributed a catalogue essay for an exhibition of Hammons's work in Greece.