Relation in Time. Marina Abramović and Ulay

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Since the beginning of her career, during the early 1970s where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the most historic early performance pieces and continues to make important durational works.

Abramović has presented her work with performances, sound, photography, video, sculpture and Transitory Objects for Human and Non Human Use in solo exhibitions at major institutions in the U.S. and Europe. Her work has also been included in many large-scale international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX, Kassel, Germany (1977, 1982 and 1992). In 1998, the exhibition Artist Body - Public Body toured extensively, including stops at Kunstmuseum and Grosse Halle, Bern and La Gallera, Valencia. In 2004, Abramović also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York and had a significant solo show, The Star, at the Maruame Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan.

Abramović has taught and lectured extensively in Europe and America. In 1994 she became Professor for Performance Art at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Braunschweig where she taught for seven years. In 2004 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Institute in Chicago.

She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale for her extraordinary video installation/performance piece Balkan Baroque‚ and in 2003 received the Bessie for The House with the Ocean View‚ a 12-day performance at Sean Kelly Gallery.

In 2005, Abramović presented Balkan Erotic Epic at the Pirelli Foundation in Milan, Italy and at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. That same year, she held a series of performances called Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was honored for Seven Easy Pieces by the Guggenheim at their International Gala in 2006 and by the AICA USA with the "Best Exhibition of Time Based Art" award in 2007. Abramović's work is included in numerous major public and private collections worldwide. She was the subject of a major retrospective at the MoMA - The Artist is Present - from March 14 through May 31, 2010.

Marina Abramović lives and works in New York.

• Category

  Education

[MsMysticworld]

Like lovers you have to have these to become as ONE. . . Patience, focus, time and space between two subjects.

As ONE. This is a masterpiece.

[BlueCoffeeDK]

sit complety still and feel how your entire body aches after only a couple of hours... then tie yourself to another human by your hair and sit there for 17 hours... when you've put this amount of stress on your body, come back and see if you still think as you do now...

[nguyentranx]

Thanks to my art history class, I'm definitely more open minded about contemporary art such as this. "The line between art and life must be fluid". This IS a masterpiece.

[Linds Tee]

I think art is when you look at a piece of work and find beauty or some kind of deeper revelation in it. I think to make art is to challenge people's perceptions and mind sets, in the hopes of broadening our minds to the world around us.

[j laz]

bollocks

[runhenry]

he wouldn't do that because he simply considers stupid

[runhenry]

Art is really a subjective concept. Based on my life experience, I really really could not see anything beautiful about this work. Yes, I understand the meaning of unity, peace or entangling and isolation or whatever-you-calls it might intend to convey. But as for the artistic significance of this work, provided that beauty is the standard, I see nothing, though beauty is on the eye of beholder

[mychanneleeezey]

Can someone forgive my ignorance and explain this?

[MsMysticworld]

That's the purpose of any kind of art . . . Or everything we analyze in this world :) it can reach your heart, mind and spirit.

You're welcome.

... Some people might not understand this level of art. But it can deepen the way you think and the way you live your life. The perspective of it :)

I encourage you to watch a performance art. You may find it wierd, ugly but deep inside BEAUTIFUL.

[Marie Lee]

Thank you for your comments I try to understand these pieces and you put them into a perspective I can understand