Born in 1946 in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, Marina Abramović led performance art from its experimental beginnings in the 1970s to its apogee. After endangering herself for over fifty-five years and still going strong, the artist has been given a retrospective at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. A true consecration marked by the representation of four emblematic Abramović performances re-enacted by live artists. Here’s a flashback at the extraordinary career of an artist who explores not only the limits of the body, but also those of the mind.
In 1973, in Edinburgh, Marina Abramović played with a sharp knife between her fingers to overcome the fear and pain of the wounds that caused her to bleed profusely. An inaugural performance decisive for her artistic direction.
A year later, in Rythm 0, performed for six hours in a Naples gallery, the artist offered herself as a sacrificial victim to the will of visitors, who were free to manipulate her body-object by means of 72 objects of pleasure or pain displayed on a table, including a feather boa, lipstick, nails, flowers, honey, a matchbox, a (loaded) pistol or a pair of scissors….
In 1975, she incised the skin of her belly with a razor blade to trace a five-pointed star.
In 1977, Imponderabilia was interrupted by the police: Marina Abramović and her partner Ulay stood naked opposite each other at the entrance to Bologna’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna, forcing the public to brush up against them to enter the museum…
Also in 1977, in Breathing In, Breathing Out, Abramović and Ulay kissed until they choked each other, while in AAA-AAA, they shouted at each other for fifteen minutes…
Exploring the Limits of Body and Mind
Ten years later, Marina Abramović won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale with Balkan Baroque, an installation-performance consisting of a pile of bloody bones on which she strives to scrape the bones one by one, while a video broadcasts images of war…
In 2005, at the Basel Fair, the artist reactivated her Nude with Skeleton, created in 2002: lying naked under a skeleton on a platform suspended 3 m from the ground, she wept over the world’s misery for 3 hours 45 minutes, until a puddle of tears formed…
Last but not least, the participatory performance entitled The Artist Is Present, which in 2010 moved the crowds at New York’s MoMA: for three months, she sat on a chair seven hours a day, six days a week – for a total of 736 hours and 30 minutes – without eating or drinking, waiting for a spectator to take a seat opposite her to look into each other’s eyes, in order to abolish time, to be in the present…
It was to transmit this art of self-mastery and endurance in performance that in 2016 the artist founded the Marina Abramović Institute. Using meditative and spiritual techniques drawn from her experiences in various communities – Thibetan, Aboriginal and Shaman – she teaches the art of pushing “the limits of body and mind”. A quest for transcendence very much in tune with the times…
After life
Till 1st January
Royal Academy of arts
Marina Abramović Institute: mai.art