Marina Abramović: 512 Hours

The Serpentine premieres a new durational performance by Marina Abramović.

In a unique work created for the Serpentine, the internationally acclaimed artist Marina Abramović will perform in the Gallery for the duration of her exhibition: 10am to 6pm, 6 days a week. Creating the simplest of environments in the Gallery spaces, Abramović’s only materials will be herself, the audience and a selection of common objects that she will use in a constantly changing sequence of events. On arrival, visitors will both literally and metaphorically leave their baggage behind in order to enter the exhibition: bags, jackets, electronic equipment, watches and cameras may not accompany them.

The public will become the performing body, participating in the delivery of an unprecedented moment in the history of performance art.

Marina Abramović is a pioneer of performance as an art form, using her own body as subject and object, she has pushed the physical and mental limits of her being. This is the first major performance by Abramović since her monumental piece The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2010, in which visitors were invited to sit in silence opposite the artist and gaze into her eyes for an unspecified amount of time. Abramović performed this work every day for three months.

The exhibition draws upon the history of Abramović’s use of her body as the basic material of her artwork. During her residency at the Serpentine, the artist will, for the first time, commit to an unscripted and improvised presence in the space of the Gallery.

In the early 1970s, as a young artist in Belgrade, Abramović began exploring the relationship between artist and audience. Since 1978 she has conducted a series of workshops with art students, using a series of simple exercises to increase physical and mental awareness. Over the course of her career, Abramović has continued to develop these workshops, expanding their scope to reach a general public, through the Marina Abramović Institute.

The exhibition by Ed Atkins takes place concurrently at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, bringing together two extraordinary artists from different generations who focus on performance, the body and language.

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia. She moved to Amsterdam in 1976 and has lived in New York since 2001. Her pioneering works of performance art have made her the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide at institutions including Kunstmuseum and Grosse Halle, Bern, Switzerland and La Gallera, Valencia, Spain (1998); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2005) Museum of Modern Art, New York in (2010); the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011); Kunsthalle, Vienna (2012). Abramović’s work was also included in Documenta VI, VII and IX (1977, 1982 and 1992); Venice Biennale 1976 and 1997, with the exhibition of Balkan Baroque in the latter earning her the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist.

Marina Abramović: 512 Hours

artists:
Marina Abramovic