Contemporary art
Marina Abramovic became one of the central figures of performance art, where meaning is generated through action, the body, endurance, and direct contact with the viewer.
Abramovic is essential for understanding how art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries moved beyond the picture and became an event of presence.
Creator story
In 1988 Abramovic and her partner Ulay set out from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China — she from the Yellow Sea, he from the Gobi Desert — each walking about 2,500 km over 90 days. They met in the middle, said goodbye and ended their twelve-year relationship: the parting was the work.
Source: Wikipedia / Wikimedia
Key works
These works make it easiest to see how the artist changed form, content, and the very way art could exist in culture.
1974
An experiment in freedom, danger, and the responsibility of the viewer.
2010
Silence and gaze as artwork.
1997
A performance about trauma, war, and collective memory.
FAQ
Quick answers to what people most often search about this artist.
Marina Abramovic was born on 30 November 1946 in Belgrade, then part of Yugoslavia. She began performing in the early 1970s and left the country in 1976, working since then in Western Europe and New York.
She turned performance into a fully fledged art form, using her own body, time, risk and endurance as material, and shifting the viewer from spectator to participant. She is often called the grandmother of performance art.
The Artist Is Present (2010), staged at her MoMA retrospective in New York: for almost three months she sat silently at a table while visitors took turns sitting opposite and holding her gaze — over 700 hours in all.
In Naples in 1974 Abramovic stood motionless for six hours beside 72 objects — from a rose and a feather to a scalpel and a loaded pistol — letting the public do as they liked. Her clothes were cut and the gun was raised to her head before other viewers intervened.
