Start here: Marina Abramović
Published on 6 September 2023
Find out more about the life and work of performance art pioneer Marina Abramović before you visit our latest exhibition in the Main Galleries.
Pushing the limits
Marina Abramović is a pioneer of performance art.
Over her remarkable 50-year career, Abramović has captivated audiences with work that pushes the limits of both body and mind.
Our exhibition is an overview of her practice. It’s organised thematically to highlight some of her enduring interests – the importance of public participation, pushing the limits of the body, drawing energy from nature and developing meaning through ritual.
Early performances
In 1974, Abramović arranged 72 objects on a table at Studio Morra in Naples, including lipstick, scissors, feathers, a rose, a bullet and a gun. She stood in the gallery for six hours, beside a written instruction that the objects could be used on her “as desired”. She called the performance Rhythm 0.
During the performance, visitors graffitied her body with the lipstick, cut her clothes with the scissors, placed the loaded gun in her hand and aimed it at her head.
Many of the elements that characterise Abramović’s performance work can be found in Rhythm 0 – she used her body as the subject of her work as well as the medium; she tested the limits of her physical and mental endurance; and she used the direct relationship with her audience to create her work.
“The same amount of time spent constructing the piece is spent deciding how the piece will be recorded, because this document stays forever,” says Abramović. Our exhibition re-stages works including Rhythm 0, The Artist is Present and Balkan Baroque using videos and installations which have been developed in close collaboration with the artist.
I cannot do anything without an audience, I need their energy.
Marina Abramović
The next generation of performance artists
Four of Abramović’s notable works are reperformed in the exhibition by the next generation of performance artists, who have been trained in the Marina Abramović Method.
This is a rare opportunity to experience the startling impact and intimacy of Abramović 's live performances first-hand.
Discover the performances:
Two naked performance artists stand either side of a narrow doorway. The audience is invited to pass sideways between them. Abramović and Ulay performed the work to explore the idea of “the artist as a door to the museum”.
A performance artist lies beneath a skeleton, which rises and falls with their breath. The artwork was inspired by an exercise practised by Tibetan Buddhist monks, which involves sleeping alongside the dead as a means of conquering our fear of dying.
Luminosity pushes the performance artist’s body to its limit. The performance artist sits suspended on a wall-mounted bicycle saddle, under bright lights, with their arms and legs extended. Describing the work, Abramović says: “When the body is exhausted you reach a point where the body doesn’t exist any more. Your connection with a universal knowledge is so acute, there is a state of luminosity”.
The House with the Ocean View is reperformed at three points during the exhibition run. A performance artist will live in a specially constructed house in the Main Galleries for 12 consecutive days. Originally held in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, the performance invited audiences to witness and share in the simple act of living.
Collaborating with Ulay
For 12 years, Abramović worked with her then-partner Ulay. The collaboration led to works that fused male and female duality into an entity they referred to as ‘That Self’.
In one of their most daring collaborations, Rest Energy, Abramović held a bow and Ulay drew back the bowstring, with an arrow aimed at Abramović’s chest – an expression of total trust and vulnerability.
Their relationship ended in the mid-1980s. Their performance The Lovers, Great Wall Walk saw Abramović and Ulay walk towards each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, meeting briefly in the middle before going separate ways.
Transitory objects
Intrigued by the absence of the artist’s body and following her partnership with Ulay, Abramović created works that make the audience, rather than the artist, the protagonist.
Shoes for Departure, from Abramović’s ‘Transitory Object for Human Use’ series, is a pair of crystal shoes weighing 70kg. Her audience is invited to “close [their] eyes, not move and depart”.
I am not particularly religious … what I do believe in is spirituality.
Marina Abramović
Spirituality
Abramović is fascinated by religion and spirituality.
She spent the early years of her childhood living with her devoutly Christian grandmother, whose blend of Serbian Orthodox Christianity with folk beliefs left a lasting impact on Abramović.
She draws on Slavic religious iconography in Four Crosses – a series of five-meter-high crosses made up of images of the artist’s face, carved in Corian (a solid surface material) and lit from behind with LEDs.
Abramović is also interested in the power of energy from nature. In her 1-hour performance to camera The Current, the artist lies on a metal structure surrounded by crystals, beneath stormy skies in a mediative trance.
"You can't place me in that box"
In an interview with RA Magazine, Abramović said “Every time you place me in one box, I jump out of it into something else”. She is an artist who refuses to be defined.
Our exhibition presents key moments from her remarkable 50-year career, through sculpture, video, photography, archive material, installation and performance.
Don’t miss the opportunity to enter the captivating world of Marina Abramović. Book now.
Marina Abramović
An art world icon and a performance art pioneer – Marina Abramović has captivated audiences by pushing the limits of her body and mind, for the past 50 years.
This major exhibition presents key moments from Abramović’s career through sculpture, video, installation and performance.
Related articles
Start here: Florence c. 1504
27 September 2024
Start here: Michael Craig-Martin
9 August 2024
Start here: Modernism in Ukraine
28 May 2024