Artists - Part 93

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist.  She was born in Belgrade in 1946.  In 1976 she moved to Amsterdam and met West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen who went by the name Ulay.  They began living and performing together.

Above, Relation in Space, 1977, in which the naked Marina and Ulay repeatedly pass, touching each other, and finally collide.  Is it art?  According to them, it is.

Another 1977 performance piece called Balance Proof.  Naked Marina and Ulay stand on opposite sides of a mirror.  Each cannot see the other; they can only see themself in the mirror.

A performance piece that generated a lot of publicity was Imponderabilia, performed at the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna, Italy.  Marina and Ulay stood naked in a narrow entrance to the museum, so people going in or out had to squeeze through between them.  According to Marina, the point of the piece was to see whether the person would face the man or the woman as they squeezed through.  Above, a woman's body is facing Ulay as she squeezes through.

But most people faced Marina, as it turned out, including two police officers who arrived to shut down the performance after ninety minutes (above).

Imponderabilia has been re-staged since then, using different performers.  Above, the male performer at an art gallery in Basel, Switzerland in 2012.

Luminosity was a 1997 piece in which Marina sat naked on a bicycle seat attached up on a wall with arms extended and illuminated by a spotlight, enduring discomfort for an extended period.  Above is a recreation of Luminosity by another performer in 2024.  So, even though Marina Abramovic is 79 years old, her performance art lives on.