Marina Abramović: Endurance and Evolution in Performance Art

Banner image by Nikola Johnny Mirkovic, sourced on Unsplash.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, who gradually shifted away from live performance, Abramović has remained committed to the medium, continually evolving and adapting her practice to new contexts and audiences. Marina Abramović’s artwork is a testament to the power of durational performance and its ability to captivate audiences over time. 

Breaking Ground in the 1970s

During the early years of her career, Abramović’s work was deeply rooted in radical self-exploration. In Rhythm 0 (1974), she famously placed herself in a passive role, allowing the audience to use any of 72 objects on her body—including a loaded gun—challenging the very nature of consent and agency in performance art. This period solidified Abramović as a daring and uncompromising artist, making her a defining force in the avant-garde movement of the time. 

Collaboration and Transition

Abramović’s partnership with Ulay, the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, between 1976 and 1988, marked a transformative period in her career. Together, they developed durational performances that explored the dynamics of intimacy and endurance, such as Relation in Time (1977) and The Lovers (1988), where they walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to say a final goodbye.  

When their partnership ended, Abramović embarked on a period of reinvention, seeking to understand how performance could evolve beyond its ephemeral roots. Abramović’s art during this phase demonstrated a shift toward deeply personal and symbolic gestures that resonated with audiences globally. 

New Directions in the 1990s and Early 2000s

Following The Lovers, Abramović turned inward, exploring themes of solitude, ritual, and spirituality in her solo performances. One of her most notable works from this period was Balkan Baroque (1997), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. In this piece, she sat for hours, scrubbing a pile of bloody cow bones, a harrowing reflection on the atrocities of the Yugoslav Wars and the cultural wounds of her homeland. This period cemented Abramović’s ability to transform personal history into universal artistic statements. 

Her works in the early 2000s continued this trajectory, blending endurance with themes of purification and transcendence. The House with the Ocean View (2002) at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York saw Abramović live in a minimalist structure for 12 days, abstaining from speaking, eating, reading, or writing. This performance invited viewers to witness her presence in a controlled environment, turning mundane actions into ritualistic gestures. The meditative quality of this piece foreshadowed her later interest in performance as a tool for personal and collective transformation.

Revisiting and Reimagining Performance Art

In the early 2000s, Abramović recognized the need to preserve performance history and engage new generations with its legacy. Seven Easy Pieces (2005) at the Guggenheim Museum was a landmark exhibition in this regard. In the work, she re-performed seminal pieces by pioneers of the field, including works by Joseph Beuys and Vito Acconci, along with two of her own.  

This project posed crucial questions about the sustainability of performance art: Can ephemeral works be reenacted? Does their power diminish when restaged?  

“The conservation of a performance poses a complex and debated question. There’s no standard approach to it,” says Pierre Saurisse, author of Performance in the Museum and Senior Lecturer, MA Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. “Should we strive to replicate the formal features of a live performance as closely as possible to its first iteration, or should we prioritize the concept of the work, its ‘spirit’? Artists like Abramović continue to pose these questions.” 

By embodying these historic performances herself, Abramović demonstrated that performance art could have an ongoing presence in institutional spaces without losing its original radical intent. 

The Artist is Present: A Defining Moment

The pinnacle of her later career came with The Artist is Present (2010), a monumental retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In this now-legendary piece, Abramović sat silently in a chair for nearly three months, inviting visitors to sit across from her in a wordless, shared experience of presence.  

The work reached unprecedented levels of engagement, with thousands of participants and an even greater audience following online and in media coverage. It underscored Abramović’s ability to connect across generations, proving that performance art—traditionally seen as underground or niche—could command mainstream attention without losing its depth. 

Performances like Seven Easy Pieces and The Artist is Present have shaped the relationship between performance art and art institutions. “When Abramović had an exhibition entirely made of live works, or delegated the execution of her 2010 retrospective in New York, she prompted museums to reconsider what an exhibition on performance could be,” says Saurisse.

Legacy and the Future of Performance

Abramović’s longevity as a performance artist is tied not only to her endurance but also to her adaptability. She has continued to expand the discipline’s reach, opening the Marina Abramović Institute to train future performance artists in durational work.  

As she continues to push boundaries well into the 21st century, Abramović remains a testament to the idea that performance art is not just about the moment—it is about creating a lasting impact that resonates across time and space. Marina Abramovic has not only shaped the history of performance art but also secured its future as a powerful, evolving form of expression.