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"I had experienced absolute freedom - I had felt that my body was without boundaries, limitless; that pain didn't matter, that nothing mattered at all - and it intoxicated me."In 2010, more than 750,000 people stood in line at Marina Abramovi's MoMA retrospective for the chance to sit across from her and communicate with her nonverbally in an unprecedented durational performance that lasted more than 700 hours. This celebration of nearly fifty years of groundbreaking performance art demonstrated once again that Marina Abramovi is truly a force of nature. The child of Communist war-hero parents under Tito's regime in postwar Yugoslavia, she was raised with a relentless work ethic. Even as she was beginning to build an international artistic career, Marina lived at home under her mother's abusive control, strictly obeying a 10 p.m. curfew. But nothing could quell her insatiable curiosity, her desire to connect with people, or her distinctly Balkan sense of humor - all of which informs her art and her life. The beating heart of Walk Through Walls is an operatic love story - a twelve-year collaboration with fellow performance artist Ulay, much of which was spent penniless in a van traveling across Europe - a relationship that began to unravel and came to a dramatic end atop the Great Wall of China. Marina's story, by turns moving, epic, and dryly funny, informs an incomparable artistic career that involves pushing her body past the limits of fear, pain, exhaustion, and danger in an uncompromising quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. A remarkable work of performance in its own right, Walk Through Walls is a vivid and powerful rendering of the unparalleled life of an extraordinary artist.



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Marina Abramovic

Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramovic has pioneered performance as a visual art form, creating some of the most important early works. The body has always been both her subject and medium. Exploring her physical and mental limits in works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. From 1975-88, Abramovic and the German artist Ulay performed together, dealing with relations of duality. Abramovic returned to solo performances in 1989. She has presented her work at major institutions in the US and Europe, including the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven,1985; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1990; Neue National Galerie, Berlin, 1993, and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1995. She has also participated in many large-scale international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX, Kassel (1977, 1982 and 1992) . Recent performances include "The House With The Ocean View" at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York in 2002, and the Performance "7 Easy Pieces" at Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2005. In 2010, Abramovic had her first major U.S. retrospective and simultaneously performed for over 700 hours in "The Artist is Present" at Museum of Modern Art, New York. Using herself and the public as medium, Abramovic performed for three months at the Serpentine Gallery in London, 2014; the piece was titled after the duration of the work, "512 Hours". She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale for the video installation and performance "Balkan Baroque." In 2008 she was decorated with the Austrian Commander Cross for her contribution to Art History. In 2013, the French Minister of Culture accepted her as an Officer to the Order of Arts and Letters. In addition to these and other awards, Abramovic also holds multiple honorary doctorates from institutions around the world. 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.Photo Nils Mu?ller and Wertical, 2014



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