Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) is the fifth artist to be honored as a Guest of Honor at OFFSCREEN. The presentation follows Anthony McCall in 2022, Rosa Barba in 2023, Chantal Akerman in 2024, and Shigeko Kubota in 2025.
“It is only with a real and long enough awakening that a person becomes present to himself, and it is only with this presence that a person begins to live like a human being.”
Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta, a major multidisciplinary artist, is renowned for her works in the landscape, or earth/body works, and sculptures in which she used her body — or its absence, evoked in what she called “siluetas” (silhouettes)— in dialogue with earth and other natural elements including fire, flowers, and water. One of the most prolific artists using film and video in the 1970s, Mendieta made over a hundred films in her career.
Mendieta is presented by Marian Goodman Gallery (New York, Paris). The presentation is developed in collaboration with the Estate of Ana Mendieta.
The installation will complement the simultaneous major exhibition at Tate Modern in London (2026) curated by Valentine Umansky, Michael Wellen and Elsa Collinson.
Born in Havana, Cuba, Mendieta was sent to the United States as a young teen after Fidel Castro came to power. As a student of the renowned Intermedia MFA program at the University of Iowa in 1972, she began working with her body and with Super 8 film. Her work has been exhibited in 56 solo exhibitions, and 16 museum retrospectives including at Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2018); Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2013); Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2004); New Museum, New York, New York (1987). Mendieta received major awards in her lifetime, including a National Endowment for the Arts Grant (1977 and 1980) and Fellowship (1982); John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1980); Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome (1983); and many others.
“A drop of rain becomes a brook, a brook becomes a river. The role of water in nature is comparable to the function of video in our life.”
Shigeko Kubota
Shigeko Kubota was born in 1937 in Niigata, Japan, and died in New York in 2015. A pioneering video artist and key figure of the international Fluxus movement, she is represented by Fergus McCaffrey. Over a five-decade career, Kubota played a crucial role in establishing video as a fine art medium and is considered one of the most influential artists in the history of video art.
Her video sculpture River (1979–81) was presented as the Guest of Honor project of OFFSCREEN Paris 2025 at La Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière.
“I would like the viewer to have a physical experience through the time used in each shot. To have this physical experience that time unfolds in you, that time enters you.”
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman was born in 1950 in Brussels, and died in Paris in 2015. The major Belgian director and pioneer of feminist and experimental filmmaking is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery (New York, Paris, Los Angeles). She made over 40 films during her lifetime, and is considered to be one of the most important European directors of her generation.
Her film « La Chambre » (1972) and stills form her film « Là-bas »(2006) were presented on a dedicated floor of the Grand Garage Haussmann.
Rosa Barba is an Italian artist based in Berlin whose work explores the intersection of film, sculpture, and installation. She examines how time shapes space, often drawing from landscapes, archives, and fictional narratives. Her pieces create layered environments where memory and perception blur. She is represented by Vistamare.
OFFSCREEN has dedicated an entire level of the Grand Garage Haussmann to her work Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage (2021). Two others pieces were presented : “Color Clock (Blue): Verticals Lean Occasionally Consistently Away from Viewpoints”, 2012 and “Weavers (Blue)” 2021.
Anthony McCall is a British-born artist known for his “solid-light” films — sculptural projections that transform light into spatial form. Oscillating between drawing, sculpture and moving image, his work invites the viewer into a physical, immersive encounter with time and space. He is represented by Galerie Martine Aboucaya and Galerie Thomas Zander.
On a dedicated floor of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, he exhibited a monumental and immersive work « Face to Face V », shown for the first time in France.