Manuel Mendive

Manuel Mendive (born December 15, 1944, in Luyanó, Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores Afro-Cuban spirituality, Yorùbá-Lucumí cosmology, ancestry, nature, slavery, and the interconnectedness of living beings. Working across painting, sculpture, performance, body painting, installation, and drawing, Mendive examines the continuing influence of African oral, religious, and philosophical traditions on Cuban culture.  Mendive graduated from the San Alejandro Academy in Havana in 1963, specializing in painting and sculpture. He also studied ethnology and folklore at the Academy of Sciences of Cuba and art history at the University of Havana. His work often engages Regla de Ocha, commonly known as Santería, as well as ritual, transformation, mythology, enslavement, ecology, and collective memory, using organic imagery, hybrid human-animal figures, painted bodies, ceremonial movement, and symbolically charged natural materials.  His work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennial, the Havana Biennial, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, and the California African American Museum. Mendive received Cuba’s National Plastic Arts Award in 2001, the Order of Félix Varela in 1994, and France’s distinction of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1994. He lives and works in San José de las Lajas, Cuba.