Marina Abramović and the Art of Being Present
Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 9 March – 31 May 2010. Photography by Andrew Russeth. Wikimedia Commons
Between March and May of 2010, Marina Abramović transformed sitting into an artwork. Entitled The Artist is Present, Abramović spent three months sitting on a simple wooden chair in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, inviting audience members to sit across from her. Participants were required to follow three simple rules: remain silent, maintain eye contact, and avoid physical contact. Some stayed for only minutes; others lingered for hours, even an entire day, much to the frustration of those waiting in line. Distilling performance art to its barest essentials – the presence of an artist and the presence of a spectator – the piece underscored Abramović’s aura as an iconic figure in contemporary art.
What does it mean for an artist to become the artwork itself? Abramović’s practice is inseparable from the mythology surrounding her. Her multifaceted identity – as a performance artist, a post-Communist subject, opera creator (see: The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas), and, most recently, the face of the “Marina Abramović Longevity Method” skincare line – renders the “real” Marina elusive. Born on 30 November 1946, in Belgrade, Serbia (then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), Abramović grew up navigating the dual influences of state socialism and Orthodox religion. Whilst her father and mother were prominent figures in the Yugoslav government, her great-uncle served as patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Abramović’s performances have often critiqued these conflicting worlds, rejecting their theatricality: for her, “Performance [art] is… the opposite [of theatre]: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.”
Some of Abramović’s most iconic works, such as her Rhythms series, emerged during her youth in Yugoslavia. These performances pushed the boundaries of her body’s endurance, employing real knives, real flames – producing real blood, and real scars. For instance, in Rhythm 5 (1973), performed at the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade, Abramović lay at the centre of a burning five-pointed Communist star. As the fire consumed the oxygen around her, she lost consciousness, causing audience members to intervene and drag her away from the star’s airless centre.
Student protests, Belgrade, 1968. Wikimedia Commons
However, Abramović’s identity often seems to transcend the “real.” After leaving Yugoslavia for Amsterdam in 1975, she embraced the narrative of a defector from the “oppressive Eastern Bloc,” seeking freedom in the West – a storyline that resonated with Cold War-era Western critics. Ironically, her early performances were funded by the very state she critiqued. The Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade, where she had developed her earliest, most groundbreaking work, was a state-funded institution, born from the 1968 student protests – of which Abramović was at the helm.
Abramović gained mainstream recognition at the 1997 Venice Biennale with her performance Balkan Baroque. Sitting amidst a heap of bloody cow bones, she scrubbed them clean over four days – a futile act, symbolising the impossibility of absolving oneself of the guilt of inherited trauma and cultural violence. Surrounded by a multi-channel video installation reflecting on the roots of this trauma within her own upbringing, the performance’s raw and visceral nature cemented her international reputation. As Yugoslavia was collapsing beneath a series of violent, ethno-nationalist conflicts, Balkan Baroque captured the art world’s attention, resonating as a stark reminder of the cyclical nature of violence and the weight of collective accountability.
In The Artist is Present, it was not blood or fire that confronted the audience, but Abramović herself – a living, breathing reality made into art. Static, draped in a long, red robe – evocative of her communist upbringing – Abramović blended the “realness” of her presence with the more traditional artistic fixations of the mystical and the transcendental – or, even, the power of the cult of personality. Challenging us to find meaning at the crux of this all, Abramović teaches us to question the boundaries between reality and myth, self and spectacle.