512 Hours, 2014

Marina Abramovic   Famous Artists

Serbian artist Marina Abramovic has marked the history of art with her intense and moving performances.

Born in 1946 in Belgrade, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and Zagreb. She taught at the Fine Arts in Novi Sad from 1973 until 1975. She first practiced painting then became interested in conceptual art and performance. Like Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, she is one of the artists who introduced performance to the world of art. She will practice body art and body art all her life.

Its performance can reach extreme situations. Her body is both medium and subject, and she uses it to push her physical and mental limits. Pain, fatigue, mutilation, all these actions allow him to face death, to free his mind, to purify himself, to elevate himself, to create a catharsis, while his mind cornered by danger approaches a truth. Her performances also aim to bring body and mind closer to nature in an age ruled by technology. His extreme works do not seek physical performance, but emotional and spiritual transformation. She feeds on the energy of the public, she who nevertheless calls herself introverted.

In her series of works "Rhythm 10", composed of 10 works, she inflicts herself in great suffering. For “Rhythm 0", she provides the public with a wide choice of instruments that they can use against her for 6 hours. The public cuts her, strips her, a man even points a pistol at her. For "Rhythm 5", it lies in the center of a burning star and thus denounces the enslavement of the Serbian people by the Soviet powers. The work “Balkan Baroque", which won the artist the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1997, also deals with this subject. It is a video-performance installation during which she cleans the bones of bloody oxen 6 hours a day for 4 days in memory of the Serbian people.

For her work "Thomas lips" also, she eats a bowl of honey, drinks a glass of wine that she breaks and then mutilates a star on her body. Between ice and fire, she thus brings into play the conservation of her body and her fear of death.

Her art has nevertheless evolved throughout her life, she turns more and more to new mediums: video, photography, installation… Her performances will be longer but quieter. She notices that her representations are more difficult to do when there is less action. His work then focused more on mental performance than on physical limits.