Marina Abramović in history

19 MINUTES

In a single, unbroken shot, Marina Abramović surveys her artistic evolution

This 2012 portrait of Marina Abramović features the celebrated conceptual artist staring down a camera that, in a single unbroken tracking shot, pulls out from an extreme close-up on her face before pushing back in. Both an artist profile and a work of art, the production evokes her famed performance piece The Artist Is Present (2010), in which she sat motionless in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for hours at a time, silently gazing into the eyes of the visitors who sat across from her. Here, however, the audience isn’t left to fill the void of silence, as Abramović details what led her from painting, to experimentation with sound, to using her body as a subject, to, ultimately, a fascination with time. This final point is explored via both her words and the form of the piece itself.

In Abramović’s retelling of her story, her art is inextricable from her childhood growing up in the former Yugoslavia, where she was born to atheistic parents dedicated to the communist cause, and cared for by religiously devout grandparents. This contradiction forms the foundation of Abramović’s’s life in art before yet another one emerges over the course of the piece – her intense, detailed planning for the future exists beside an enduring openness to change and personal revelation.

Video by Art21

Producer: Susan Sollins

Explore more

Illustration of two people standing in a forest, at the top of a waterfall, with a dog below; money is washing away down the waterfall into a pond, as well as a car and house pictured in the pond below.

Money

When an investment tanked and buried us in debt, we had to face the truth of how we’d gotten there

by Carol Berkower

A large rock with carvings and natural indentations surrounded by green foliage.

The lost art of making a petroglyph

Inspired by 6,000-year-old rock art in Norway, I decided to create a new carving closer to home

by Rémy Noë

A cyclist on a yellow bike passing a closed fast food shop with a yellow and maroon facade and a one-way sign.

A detour home, through Portuguese

Losing my mother tongue was painful and humiliating. Could learning a new language help me heal?

by Frances Nguyen

A person with a backpack hiking through a dense forest towards a rocky riverbank.

In the hole

A metaphor for depression became a catalyst, and I started to reinvent my approach to suffering

by Tasha Eichenseher

A bulldozer and excavator at a quarry with a clear blue sky in the background.

Scarred

The highway I’d helped build stretched before me. For the first time, I saw clearly what we had done

by JShawn Guess

Hands holding freshly picked blackberries, with a background of green leaves and a black and white spotted dress.

Sweetness and light

After years of subsisting on protein bars and iceberg lettuce, berry-picking brought me home to my body

by Jamie Cattanach

Photo of a person carrying a child with blue star shorts on their back, walking on a path lined with green plants.

A sister who wasn’t ours

We were her foster family for two and a half years. We had no claim to her, but she became part of us

by Kelsey Day

Abstract drawing of a face with vibrant colours, featuring red cheeks and a patterned necklace on an orange background.
Psyche Exclusive

Born of memory and mystery – the otherworldly works of a self-taught, unhoused artist

Directed by Tal Amiran