![Seven Deaths, 2021, color video, stereo sound](https://img.artlogic.net/w_1320,h_1320,c_limit/exhibit-e/62f52bf90af321abff00fe82/8436309704bab28ae164624d1b5f527d.jpeg)
Seven Deaths, 2021
color video, stereo sound
runtime: 61 min 30 sec
Edition of 5 plus 2 APs
MA-330
b.1946
Portrait of Marina Abramovic, © Nils Müller and Wertical, 2014
Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Since the beginning of her career in the early 1970s when 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 and sculpture 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, Switzerland and La Gallera, Valencia, Spain. In 2004, Abramović exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York and had a significant solo show, The Star, at the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan and the Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan.
In addition to her art practice, Abramović has taught and lectured extensively in Europe and America. In 1994, she became Professor for Performance Art at the Hochschule für Bildende Künst in Braunschweig, where she taught for seven years. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the Art Institute in Chicago, The University of Plymouth and Willams College, in 2004, and the University of Haifa, Israel, in 2022. She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale for her extraordinary video installation/performance piece Balkan Baroque. In 2003, Abramović received the New Media Bessie award for The House with the Ocean View (2002) ‚ a 12-day performance at Sean Kelly Gallery, which was also named one of the 15 shows that altered the course of contemporary art by The New York Times in 2023. In 2011, Abramović participated in visionary director Robert Wilson’s The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, the critically acclaimed re-imagining of Abramović’s biography, which continues to tour internationally. The feature-length documentary, Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, premiered in January 2012 at the Sundance Film Festival and has since received widespread critical acclaim. In 2015, Abramović was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, entitled Private Archaeology. In conjunction with her solo exhibition at MONA, Abramović conducted a 12-day residency program, through Kaldor Public Art Projects in Sydney, Australia.
In 2007, Abramovic founded the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI), a platform for immaterial and long durational work to create new possibilities for collaboration among thinkers of all fields. The institute inhabited its most complete form to date in 2016 in collaboration with NEON in As One, Benaki Museum, Athens. In 2023, MAI took over the entirety of the Queen Elizabeth Hall to present performances in conjunction with Abramović’s exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Abramović was one of the first performance artists to become formally accepted by the institutional museum world, with major solo shows taking place throughout Europe and the US over a period of more than 25 years. Her first European retrospective The Cleaner was presented at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden in 2017, followed by presentations at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark, Henie Onstad, Sanvika, Norway (2017), Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany (2018), Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun (2019), and Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Serbia (2019). The artist’s opera 7 Deaths of Maria Callas debuted at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, Germany in 2020, and traveled to Palais Garnier, Paris, France and the Greek National Opera, Athens, Greece in 2021. In 2023, Abramović was the first female artist to host a major solo exhibition in the Main Galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Marina Abramović lives and works in New York.
Marina Abramovic restaging her best-known performance, CBS News, March 24, 2022
Marina Abramović | Performative, Exhibition at Sean Kelly, March 4 – April 16, 2022.
Spotlight | Marina Abramović: The Lovers, A discussion between Marina Abramović and Sean Kelly, Sean Kelly Gallery (New York), PHOTOFAIRS | Shangai 2019
92nd Street Y, Marina Abramović with Carl Swanson, January 25, 2017
PBS News Hour, Brief But Spectacular: Marina Abramovic, Jul 30, 2015
Marina Abramović: An art made of trust, vulnerability and connection, TED2015, March 2015
Body of Art: Meet performance artist Marina Abramovic, CBS Sunday Morning, November 2014
Marina Abramović: Embracing Fashion, ART21 "Exclusive", 2012
Marina Abramović: A Celluloid Exploration, Nowness, March 2010
Marina Abramović has been elected to the National Academy, a prestigious association of esteemed artists and architects committed to building and sharing the heritage of the arts in America.
Abramović inaugurates her project at Ekebergparken, a sculpture and national heritage park in Oslo, Norway, coinciding with the ongoing celebration of Edvard Munch’s 150th anniversary.
Marina Abramović will be prominently featured in this year's Luminato Festival in Toronto, Canada.
This season of the critically acclaimed Sundance Channel series Iconoclasts will premiere with an episode profiling Marina Abramovic and James Franco. The television show, which pairs two visionaries to discuss their influences, passions and creative processes, provides an intimate look into the lives, work, past experiences and aspirations that have made each icon who they are today.
Film Forum in New York City will present the U.S. theatrical premiere of the award-winning, feature-length documentary, MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ THE ARTIST IS PRESENT. The film, from first-time director Matthew Akers, offers an exclusive behind-the-scenes portrait of Abramović, following the artist in the momentous year leading up to her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010. The film will be on view at Film Forum from Wednesday, June 13 through Tuesday, June 26, 2012.
Marina Abramović is the subject of a solo exhibition opening at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art (PAC) in Milan, Italy. The exhibition, entitled The Abramović Method, will feature an eponymously-titled body of new work. The exhibition will be accompanied by a two volume catalogue; the first volume will detail the history of Abramović's performances in Italy while the second will focus on the exhibition itself. The Abramović Method is curated by Diego Sileo and Eugenio Viola.
The ninth annual Canadian Art Reel Artists Film Festival (RAFF) will feature both Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present and Rebecca Horn's Moon Mirror Journey. The focus of this year's festival is revolutionary artists.
The captivating new HBO feature-length documentary, MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ THE ARTIST IS PRESENT, will have its world premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film, from first-time director Matthew Akers, offers an exclusive behind-the-scenes portrait of Abramović, following the artist in the momentous year leading up to her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010.
Manchester International Festival and Teatro Real Madrid present the world premiere of a startling new piece for the stage: The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, a biography of the godmother of performance art, re-imagined by visionary director Robert Wilson and performed by Marina Abramovic.
This year, SCAD deFINE ART will honor Marina Abramović, a pioneer of performance art as a visual art form.