The Serbian artist is redesigning her legendary 2010 performance "The Artist is Present," and will auction tickets to the installation at the Sean Kelly gallery in New York. Proceeds will go to a charity for Ukraine.
A scene from "The Artist is Present"Image: Marco Anelli/Marco Anelli/Courtesy of Marina Abramovic/dpa/picture alliance
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"What is the duty of an artist? What is the duty of a human being? How we can help?" Marina Abramovic wondered in an interview last week with DW, deeply upset by the war in Ukraine.
The day after the Russian invasion, she said in a video that "an attack on Ukraine is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on humanity and it must be stopped." Unlike the earlier wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, this one, she says, feels close, virtually in her own "backyard."
So she found a way, using her art, to support an aid organization. On April 16 at New York's Sean Kelly Gallery, the three people who donated the most in a recent auction will sit opposite her in the new edition of her iconic 2010 performance "The Artist is Present."
The auction on the Artsy platform ended on March 25, and the proceeds went to the Direct Relief aid organization, which, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Health Ministry, provides medical aid as well as long-term support for people affected by the war in Ukraine.
Active in Ukraine before the war
For an artist living in New York, the perceived proximity of the war may sound strange. But Abramovic grew up as the daughter of partisans in Yugoslav Serbia, and has visited Ukraine several times. Just last year, she visited the Babyn Jar Holocaust memorial outside Kyiv, where her most expansive installation to date was inaugurated.
"The Crystal Wall of Crying" is a 40-meter-long interactive "wailing wall" made of coal and studded with giant quartz crystals. It commemorates the site of one of the largest mass shootings in World War II: Over two days in September 1941, more than 33,000 people, mainly Jewish, were murdered by members of the German Wehrmacht and the Sonderkommando SS in the ravine of Babyn Jar.
Abramovic standing by "The Crystal Wailing Wall" in Babyn JarImage: Irina Yakovleva/dpa/TASS/picture alliance
A wall of healing
Not far from the memorial, the Kyiv TV tower was hit by a missile on March 1. It is almost a miracle that the wall was not damaged. If the "Crystal Wall of Crying" survives the war unscathed, it will no longer just be a place for mourning and remembrance, but also a place for healing. As the artist sees it, and here she quotes the Dalai Lama, "The only way to stop killing is to learn how to forgive." That's the key to humanity, she says.
But that is not easy in view of the daily escalation of the war, the many civilian victims, and the millions of people fleeing within and from Ukraine. Forgiveness is a big word — what counts is to take a stance now, she says. There is no doubt in her mind that Russian artists who do not distance themselves from Putin should be boycotted.
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Art that hurts
Many of Abramovic's past performances involve her inflicting injuries on herself, as in "Lips of Thomas" (1975/1993/2005), in which she carved the five-pointed communist star into her stomach, then lay down on ice and used a hair dryer to make the wound bleed. Her performances are often a personal transgression of boundaries.
Marina Abramovic: A lifelong performance
She's renowned throughout the world for her extreme performance art: Marina Abramovic has greatly influenced the genre for more than 40 years, easing its way into the world's big art museums.
She laid naked on blocks of ice, cut herself and screamed until she lost her voice: Marina Abramovic used her body as a radical tool of expression like no other artist before her. A look back at the life and work.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
1973: Pain, but no pain
Her first performance involved playing the Russian game with 10 knives and two tape recorders. It was an eye-opener for her: "I felt as though my body had no limits, as though pain couldn't affect me anymore, as though nothing mattered anymore — an exhilarating experience," Marina Abramovic wrote in her autobiography. "At that moment, I knew that I had found the medium that was right for me."
Marina Abramovic, born to two partisans, grew up in Belgrade. She was privileged in that she was given an art education, but she also felt lonely and was often beaten by her mother. The oppression of Tito's regime in former communist Yugoslavia often features in her hazardous works. During this performance in Belgrade, she was rescued from flames by people in the audience.
Image: Nebojsa Cankovic/Marina Abramovic Archives
1975: Artistic development
In her early works, injuries inflicted by herself or others, nudity and unconsciousness were means of expression she frequently used. This was the artist's way of protesting against decorative esthetics that had marked her youth: "I was convinced that art ought to be disturbing, that it should pose questions while being trendsetting."
An encounter with German artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) heralded a new era in Abramovic's work. They fell in love at first sight and worked as a creative team from then on. Their cooperation started off with a noteworthy performance at the Venice Biennale with both artists colliding against each other with their naked bodies — for 58 minutes.
Image: Ulay/Marina Abramović/Moderna Museet
1978: Creative fusion
The two artists lived and worked together for 12 years. It can be assumed that they spent half of that time on an artistic flight of fancy. Totally free, they lived in a small Citroen bus for four years, traveling to various locations where they were invited to give performances.
Even their separation in 1988 was sealed with a performance. In a piece called "The Great Wall Walk," they walked towards each other along the Great Wall of China, starting at opposite ends and meeting in the middle. The work was originally planned as a romantic manifesto, but they ended up doing the three-month walk to end their relationship. They separated, both as a couple, and as a team.
Rather than slowing down Marina Abramovic's output, the separation actually inspired her. In 1997, she was invited to present her work in the international section of the Venice Biennale. She was awarded a Golden Lion for her performance "Balkan Baroque," dealing with the Balkan Wars, in which she spent seven hours a day washing a mountain of bloody cow bones, over four days.
Her bone action was reminiscent of an earlier series of video performances called "Cleaning the Mirror," which was later reperformed in retrospectives of her work. Reperformances are an opportunity to preserve some of her performance artworks. Since the 1990s, she has also been transmitting her "Abramovic Method" to young performance artists.
Abramovic moved to New York in 2000, where she developed theater pieces, performances and encounters with other artists. It took the American public quite some time to accept her art. In "House with The Ocean View," the artist spent 12 days in three open rooms. Her vision for this piece was to transform the energy field between herself and the viewers.
The exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art was not only a comprehensive retrospective featuring re-performances of her best known works. She herself was present for three months so that the visitors could meet her personally — a huge success. The surrounding media hype helped her reach not only an elite interested in modern art, but a very broad public as well.
Image: Marco Anelli /Marina Abramovic Archives
2020: Remembering an icon
In 2020 the artist debuted the operatic project, "7 Deaths of Maria Callas," at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper, which she re-enacted the deaths of an opera star whom she idolized. "Like many of the opera heroines she created on stage, she too died of love. She died of a broken heart," said Abramovic.
Image: Aris Messinis/AFP
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For "Balkan Baroque" at the 1997 Venice Biennale, Abramovic spent days scrubbing bloody, stinking bones in a basement room. Her drastic response to the war in Yugoslavia, which had begun six years earlier, won her the Biennale's "Golden Lion" award. You can't wash oneself clean of the blood of the victims — a statement that is universally valid, also in the war against Ukraine.
'So many more immediate things'
But art doesn't come first right now, she says. When she sees hospitals being bombed and babies carried out, there are "so many more immediate things to be done, more urgent than anything else."
Money for medicine and refugee shelters are a priority right now, she says, to help to save human lives. Her financial contribution is a new edition of her long-term performance "The Artist is Present" from 2010. For three months, Abramovic sat silently, without leaving her chair, during opening hours at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Visitors could take a seat opposite her. With "The Artist is Present," she finally became a legend.
Of the war in Ukraine she says it is not clear how it can and will end. It could lead to a third world war, she says, pointing out that her generation was born after World War II. "But this is so dangerous because we are really pushing Putin's ego. He can't lose, he will destroy every single stone in Ukraine before leaving."
"The situation is much more dangerous than we think, for all people, for the whole planet," she says.
