I only do something if I’m afraid of it, because that’s the whole point.
The Royal Academy's forthcoming Marina Abramović retrospective, spanning five decades of her work, is perhaps one of Autumn's most anticipated shows. Curated by Andrea Tarsia, Director of Exhibitions, in close collaboration with the artist, it will be the first major solo survey in the UK of Marina Abramović and the first solo show by a woman in the Royal Academy’s Main Galleries – 255 after its founding.
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Originally trained as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Marina Abramović transitioned to performance art in the early 1970s. Her performances, which often involved simple actions repeated and sustained over long durations, pushed the emerging discipline of performance art into the mainstream. Abramović was a pioneer in using the human body for art, pushing her own physical and mental limits. From 1975 to 1988, Abramović collaborated with her then-partner, the German artist Ulay, in a series of projects that explored the female and male relationship. Afterwards, she returned to solo performances and created performative objects, performances for the camera, and involving audiences in her work.
The Royal Academy's exhibition will survey Abramović's seminal works over photographs, videos, objects and installations. Some of these have involved the artist burning, cutting, tattooing and drugging herself. Rhythm 0, an eight-hour work performed in Naples in 1974, projected on video at the RA, invited members of the audience to do whatever they wished with the artist, who stood motionless alongside a table (also featured in the exhibition) that contained 72 objects such as chains, knives, hammers, a gun, wine, a rose, and a feather. A running theme in many of these performances is the exploration of physical limits, as well as the spiritual. The Artist is Present (MoMA, 2010), also projected on video at the RA, involved the artist sitting still for 75 days across an empty chair as members of the public took turns sitting in front of her.
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The Royal Academy's show will also feature four of some of her most iconic live performance pieces, restaged by young artists trained by the Marina Abramović Institute. These include one of Abramović’s performances with Ulay titled Imponderabilia (1977), which involves the public squeezing past two performers standing in a doorway completely nude. For another reenacted live performance, Nude With Skeleton (2002), Abramović adapted the practice of Tibetan monks sleeping next to the dead and lay naked with a human skeleton on top of her. Luminosity (1997), featuring a woman sitting on a bicycle seat in the middle of a wall with a projected light on her, will also be reperformed.
Related: Goodbye Ulay: Pioneer of Performance Art
The exhibition will conclude with The House with the Ocean View, first performed by Abramović at the MoMA in 2002 and restaged by three young artists for the Royal Academy. For the performance, the artist lived continuously for 12 days in three concrete units that functioned as a bedroom, living room and bathroom, fasting from food and only drinking water, connected to the floor by ladders made from knives.
Related: An Interview with Marina Abramović
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The exhibition will take place from September 23, 2023 to January 1, 2024 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Imponderabilia will be performed daily, as will Nude with Skeleton. Luminosity will be performed intermittently: September 23 - October 4; October 16 - November 20; December 3 - 5; December 18- January 1. The House with the Ocean View will be performed by Elke Luyten on October 5 - 16; by Kira O’Reilly on November 21 - December 2; and by Amanda Coogan on December 6 - 17. In a Q&A for the Press View at the Royal Academy, Abramović hinted that she intends to make spontaneous visits to the exhibition to interact with visitors, but won't be able to participate in the performances because of a recent pulmonary embolism that nearly killed her earlier this year.
