Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Being active for over four decades, Abramović refers to herself 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. In 2007, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a non-profit foundation for performance art.

Abramović was born in Belgrade, Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, on November 30, 1946. In an interview, Abramović described her family as having been "Red bourgeoisie." Her great-uncle was Varnava, Serbian Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Both her Montenegrin-born parents, Danica Rosić and Vojin Abramović, were Yugoslav Partisans during World War II. After the war, Abramović's parents were awarded the Order of the People's Heroes and were given positions in the postwar Yugoslavian government.

She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade from 1965 to 1970. She completed her post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, SR Croatia, in 1972. Then she returned to SR Serbia and, from 1973 to 1975, taught at the Academy of Fine Arts at Novi Sad while launching her first solo performances. In 1976, following her marriage to Neša Paripović (between 1971 and 1976), Abramović went to Amsterdam to perform a piece and then decided to move there permanently.

From 1990 to 1995, Abramović was a visiting professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Berlin University of the Arts. From 1992 to 1996, she also served as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, and from 1997 to 2004, she was a professor of performance art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Braunschweig.

Abramović claims she feels "neither like a Serb nor a Montenegrin" but an ex-Yugoslav. "When people ask me where I am from," she says, "I never say Serbia. I always say I come from a country that no longer exists." In 2016, Abramović stated that she has had three abortions throughout her life, adding that having children would have been a "disaster for her work."

Abramović directed a segment, Balkan Erotic Epic, in Destricted, a compilation of erotic films made in 2006. In 2008 she directed a segment called Dangerous Games in another film compilation, Stories on Human Rights. She also acted in a five-minute short film Antony and the Johnsons: Cut the World.

The Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) is a performance art organization with a focus on performance, long durational works, and the use of the "Abramovic Method." It was a proposed multi-functional museum space in Hudson, New York, in its early phases. Abramović purchased the site for the institute in 2007. Located in Hudson, New York, the building was built in 1933 and has been used as a theater and community tennis center. The building was to be renovated according to a design by Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu of OMA. A Kickstarter campaign funded the early design phase of this project.

The campaign was funded by more than 4,000 contributors, including Lady Gaga and Jay-Z. The building project was canceled in October 2017 due to its high anticipated cost. However, the institute continues to operate as a traveling organization. MAI has partnered with many institutions and artists internationally, traveling to Brazil, Greece, and Turkey.