Exiled from Cuba at a young age, Mendieta said that she was “overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature).” Seeking a way to, in her words, “return to the maternal source,” she used her body to commune with sand, ice, and mud, among other natural media, as a way to “become one with the earth.”

As its title suggests, Unnamed Figures not only illuminates Black appearances in the visual culture of this period but also asks how our encounters with them are shaped by the erasure of Blackness from art and archives.