Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović is a Serbian conceptual, performance artist, predominantly focused on the self, body, and the limitations of our mortal existence, through a feminist lens. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and completed post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia. Since then, she has taught at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Berlin University of the Arts, Hochschule fur bildende Kunste Hamburg and Braunschweig. She currently leads the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) that supports artists’ exploration of durational performance. She lives and works in New York City.

A pioneer of performance as a visual art form, Marina Abramović has used her body as both subject and medium of her performances to test her physical, mental, and emotional limits—often pushing beyond them and even risking her life—in a quest for heightened consciousness, transcendence, and self-transformation. Characterized by endurance and pain—and by repetitive behavior, actions of long duration, and intense public interactions and dialogues—her work has engaged, fascinated, and at times repelled live audiences.

She received numerous honours, including an honorary doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago (2004), a Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), a Bessie (2003), and awards from the International Association of Art Critics (2003, 2007). Abramović has had major exhibitions and performances at the Garage Art Center, Moscow (2011); Manchester International Festival (2011); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2001); Irish Museum of Modern Art (2001); Documenta (1977, 1982,1992); and the Venice Biennale (1976, 1997, 2009).