Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramovićis a Yugoslav performance artist based in New York. Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over three decades, Abramović has been described as the "grandmother of performance art." She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body."...
NationalitySerbian
ProfessionPerformance Artist
Date of Birth30 November 1946
CountrySerbia
Marina Abramovic quotes about
Most people are more comfortable with what is familiar. I’ve spent my life doing the opposite.
I hate kitchens. I don't understand these enormous American kitchens that take up half the living room and then they just order pizza.
Because of technology, we don't develop telepathy. We don't use telepathy, but use, you know, the mobile phones. Why?
I didn't get paid for performances most of my life. If I did, I would be billionaire now, and I'm not.
If we go for the easy way, then we never change
You can't choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.
It's okay that we're not perfect. It's okay that we all have problems. It's okay to cry, to show emotions.
We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.
You create a friendship on a level that you've never done before. The basic kind of experience is to basically give love to total strangers all the time, and that really changed everything in me. And this piece transformed me more than any other one before. I saw my entire life differently. What do I have to do? What is my passion on this planet? I'm much more focused than I ever was before.
I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny; mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.
The brother of my grandfather was the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and revered as a saint. So everything in my childhood is about total sacrifice, whether to religion or to communism. This is what is engraved on me. This is why I have this insane willpower. My body is now beginning to be falling apart, but I will do it to the end. I don't care. With me it is about whatever it takes.
Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.
Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.
The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.