ART-PRESENTATION: Marina Abramović-The Cleaner

Marina Abramović,Balkan Baroque Performance, 4 days-6 hours at XLVII Biennale Venice, June 1997, © Marina Abramovi/Bildupphovsrätt 2017, & Moderna MuseetAt once radical, controversial and revered, Marina Abramović is one of the most discussed artists. In her work Marina Abramović explores the intersection between performing and visual art, with a focus in equal shares on body and time. Since the early ‘70s she has continued to develop and expose a field of art other than the object based to a wider audience.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive

The exhibition “The Cleaner” at Moderna Museet is Marina Abramović’s first major retrospective in Europe and features more than 120 works. It presents several of her best-known performances, including the “Relation Works” with Ulay, her collaborator and partner from 1976-1988. These works take the form of live reperformances, films, installations and photographs from the ‘70s to today, early paintings and works on paper from the ‘60s and onwards, some of which are being exhibited for the first time. Also included are her relatively unknown audio works from the ‘70s. Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade, Ex-Yugoslavia in 1946, to partisan parents, who met during WWII and were national heroes under Marshal Tito’s regime. Raised in her childhood primarily by her orthodox grandmother, religion and revolution impacted profoundly on her early life and continue to permeate her artistic practice. In “Rhythm 5 “(1974/2011) she sets fire to a communist star that can also be read as a pentagram when inverted. The video installation “The Hero” (2001) is a ritualistic elegy for her father. Abramović’s works seek the core of concepts such as loss, memory, being, pain, endurance and trust. Her work is a matter of life and death, questions about existence and art are brought to a head in ways that may both provoke and move us. Rarely has anyone explored the physical and mental pain thresholds as she does. In “The Lovers” (1988) Abramović and Ulay undertook a 90-day walk from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, their halfway meeting marked the end of their love affair and more than ten-year partnership. For seven days (27/2–5/3/17) will be performed “The Cleaner” (2017), a new work by Marina Abramović, in collaboration with Lynsey Peisinger, at the Eric Ericson Hall. Together with the Eric Ericson International Choral Centre, Marina Abramović, 30 performers, 15 singers and a large number of choirs, will create an entirely new performance work. For the first time, Abramović uses choral singing as an integral part of a collective performance. The singing forms a non-stop soundscape, which lasts throughout the opening hours (14:00-22:00) at Eric Ericson Hall. Also a selection of Abramović’s performance works will be reperformed in the exhibition by specially-trained performance artists. The featured works are: “Freeing Series (Freeing the Voice, Freeing the Body and Freeing the Memory)” (all 1975) where the voice, memory and body are liberated, “Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful” (1975), where the same phrase and action are repeated obsessively, like an incantation and  “Cleaning the Mirror” (1995), where one person carefully scrubs a human skeleton in a confrontation with mortality, this is the second reperformance of the work since the original version, when it was performed for a video recording.

Info: Curator: Lena Essling and Tine Colstrup, Assistant curator: Olga Krzeszowiec Malmsten, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Duration: 18/2-21/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue & Fri 10:00-20:00, Wed-Thu 10:00-18:00, Sat-sun 11:00-17:00, www.modernamuseet.se

Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, Performance 3 months at The Museum of Modern Art-New York, 2010, © Marina Abramović/Bildupphovsrätt 2016, Photo: © Marco Anelli, Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives, & Moderna Museet
Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, Performance 3 months at The Museum of Modern Art-New York, 2010, © Marina Abramović/Bildupphovsrätt 2016, Photo: © Marco Anelli, Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives, & Moderna Museet

 

 

Marina Abramović, The Cleaner, 2009 B&W Photograph, Photo: © Marco Anelli, Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives Bildupphovsrätt & Moderna Museet
Marina Abramović, The Cleaner, 2009 B&W Photograph, Photo: © Marco Anelli, Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives Bildupphovsrätt & Moderna Museet

 

 

Marina Abramović, The Hero, 2001, © Marina Abramović, Photo: © TheMahler.com, Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives Bildupphovsrätt & Moderna Museet
Marina Abramović, The Hero, 2001, © Marina Abramović, Photo: © TheMahler.com, Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives Bildupphovsrätt & Moderna Museet

 

 

Left: Marina Abramović at the Eric Ericson Hall, 2017 Photo: Moderna Museet / Åsa Lundén, Courtesy Moderna Museet. Right: Marina Abramović, Shoes for Departure, 1991 © Marina Abramović/Bildupphovsrätt 2017, Photo: Heini Schneebeli, Courtesy Marina Abramović Archives & Moderna Museet
Left: Marina Abramović at the Eric Ericson Hall, 2017 Photo: Moderna Museet / Åsa Lundén, Courtesy Moderna Museet. Right: Marina Abramović, Shoes for Departure, 1991 © Marina Abramović/Bildupphovsrätt 2017, Photo: Heini Schneebeli, Courtesy Marina Abramović Archives & Moderna Museet