Who is Ana Mendieta? The Original Panels
Christine Redfern, Caro Caron
Exhibition
September 11 - October 31, 2026
Opening Reception
September 10, 5 - 9:30 p.m.
Artist Talk
October 1, 6 p.m.
Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado (New York) on Who Is Ana Mendieta?
in conversation with Christine Redfern & Caro Caron
About the Exhibition
In 2004, Christine Redfern began researching the life and work of Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985). The project grew out of a simple question: why were the contributions of so many women artists not being passed from one generation to the next?
Redfern wanted to look back at the generation of women artists who came before her and focus on an artist whose work had been largely absent from the histories she had been taught.
Mendieta had not disappeared everywhere. Her legacy remained strong in Cuba, where she was recognized as an important international artist, and her work continued to circulate in parts of Europe. But within the North American art history Redfern had encountered, she was conspicuously absent.
Working closely with fellow Montreal artist Caro Caron, Redfern spent seven years researching Mendieta’s life, work and death. The resulting graphic novella, Who Is Ana Mendieta?, was published in English in 2011 by the Feminist Press (New York) and in French by les Éditions du remue-ménage (Montréal).
Mendieta was brown-skinned, female and an immigrant. Coming of age in the United States at the height of the feminist revolution and the civil rights movement, everything, including equality, must have seemed possible.
Beginning in 1972, Mendieta used photography and film to document her ephemeral performances and earth-body works. The female body, both physical presence and archetype, was central to her practice, as were questions of life, death, transformation and our relationship to the natural world. Producing close to eighty films during her career, she was one of the most prolific artist-filmmakers of her generation.
Over the past two decades, Mendieta’s place within contemporary art history has steadily been reconsidered. The current exhibition Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern, curated by Michael Wellen, Valentine Umansky and Elsa Collinson, brings together more than 120 works, including Mendieta’s important Silueta series, newly remastered films, sculptures and installations.
The exhibition at ELLEPHANT presents the 20 original panels from the graphic novella Who Is Ana Mendieta? The book tells the story of Mendieta’s life and art while also reflecting the larger social, political and cultural forces that shaped her and her time.
The story of Who Is Ana Mendieta? also traces an idea at the heart of Mendieta’s practice that has become increasingly resonant today: that nothing in the world happens in isolation; everything is connected.
We hope you can join us at ELLEPHANT for this exhibition celebrating the life and art of Ana Mendieta.
Christine Redfern is a Montreal-based artist, writer, curator and founder of ELLEPHANT, where she serves as director and curator. Active in contemporary art since the 1990s, she has exhibited her work, curated exhibitions and written extensively on visual art. Redfern holds a BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University and a BSc in Biomedical Communications from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.
Caro Caron is a painter, cartoonist, illustrator, and sculptor. A fixture of Montreal’s underground and comix scenes, she explores fantasies, observations, and oddities through every medium imaginable. Drawing on outsider art, comics, and unusual finds, her work is distinguished by loud colours, offbeat characters, graphic saturation, and a kitschy, subversive, provocative poetry. Her work has circulated widely since the 1990s.
Jennifer Caroccio Maldonado is Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. Her research focuses on Latinx literature and culture, graphic narratives, and women of colour feminist theory. Her current book project examines Latinx graphic memoirs and comic biographies as forms of counter-history that challenge dominant narratives about Latinx communities. Her writing has appeared in The Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies and other academic publications. She holds a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University–Newark.