Marina Abramović 1946-

By Aliza Wall

Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, 1974, Studio Morra, Naples, assorted objects, https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/243/3118. 

Born November 30, 1946, in Belgrade, Serbia, Marina Abramović is the self-proclaimed “grandmother of performance art”, pioneering the notion of the body as a site of artistic exploration. Abramović’s childhood was difficult; she lived with her ultra-religious grandmother until age six and was controlled and abused by her mother until she was twenty-nine years old. These early traumas are reflected rather clearly in her work through her interest in ritual, bodily pain, and discipline. Abramović’s artistic career began at age sixteen when she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade to study painting. In 1972 she completed her postgraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. 

Abramović’s early works are almost masochistic in their level of bodily harm. Her first major work, Rhythm 10 (1973) involved the artist repeatedly and rapidly stabbing the space between her fingers with various knives. This fascination with blood and cutting stemmed from the artist’s experience with haemophilia as a child and a desire to, through art, conquer her fear of it. In Rhythm 0 (1974), one of the artist’s most famous performances, she stood immobile in a room for six hours alongside a table with 72 objects which the audience could use on her at their discretion. The piece explores the physical limits of the body as well as responsibility, collective action, and ritual. During this early period, Abramović performed several other Rhythms which included ingesting seizure medication, jumping into a fire, and inhaling air from an industrial fan. 

In 1975 Abramović moved to Amsterdam where she would soon after meet her artistic partner and lover Ulay. During their thirteen-year relationship, the two artists created a variety of pieces, many of which continued Abramović’s early interest in the body but incorporated elements of psychic energy and dichotomy. The pair’s 1977 performance, Breathing in-Breathing out, is emblematic of their early collaborations. In this performance, Abramović and Ulay breathed into each other’s mouths until their lungs filled with carbon dioxide and both lost consciousness. The piece explores the limits of the body as well as the individual’s ability to absorb and exchange the life force of another. The pair created similarly provocative performances until 1988. To end their relationship, Abramović and Ulay performed Lovers (1988) in which they each walked the Great Wall of China starting from opposite ends and met in the middle to “say good-bye”. 

Following her separation from Ulay, Abramović began making interactive sculptures such as Black Dragon: Waiting (1990) which required viewers to press their bodies against mineral “pillows”. She also continued to perform pieces like Balkan Baroque (1997) in which she cleaned bones as a reflection on her family, culture, and the shame of war. Later that same year she was awarded the Gold Lion for best artist at the Venice Biennale. In 2005, Abramović presented Seven Easy Pieces, a series of reenactments of her own and other artists’ seminal performances. This piece interrogates (and offers a solution to) the legacy of performance art—a medium that does not allow for faithful documentation or identical reperformance. In 2010, she presented her retrospective, The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition consisted of documents and objects from her body of work as well as re-enactments of her earlier works by hired performers. Most notably, Abramović presented the eponymous performance, The Artist is Present, in which she sat opposite strangers and maintained eye contact with them. According to Abramović, this performance was offered to the audience as a diametric opposite of Rhythm 0—a performance designed to “lift spirits” rather than inspire chaos. Rhythm 0 and The Artist is Present serve as markers of Abramovićs public image, from sadistic madwoman to genius artist. However, both pieces (as with her entire oeuvre) are profound explorations of consciousness, the body, and the self. The artist continues to live and work in New York. 

Bibliography

Bell, Elise. “How to live, according to Marina Abramović.” Dazed. February 21, 2018. https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39128/1/how-to-live-according-to-artist-marina-abramovic-sean-kelly-early-works-new-york. 

Cunningham, John M. “Marina Abramović.” Encyclopedia Brittanica. November 26, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marina-Abramovic. 

“Marina Abramović.” Guggenheim. Accessed August 30, 2019. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/marina-abramovic. 

Summers, Francis. “Abramović, Marina.” Grove Art Online. July 25, 2013. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000097030?rskey=UFx2GU.