To propose a work about "here and now" which makes you think, makes you worried, which lives through and with danger, that's the aim of Marina Abramovic, one of the pioneers of body art, whose performances have pushed back physical and mental frontiers and made her famous worldwide. In taking her own body as the object of her art, she creates special rituals, acts that are often extracts of daily routine where effort, like pain, take part in this unique moment of truth from which comes an intense feeling shared with the public. This is what she calls liberating and purifying function of performance. At the height of avant-garde in the 1970s, first of all with her companion Ulay, and then going solo, Marina Abramovic, a daughter of Yugoslav partisans, born in Belgrade in 1946, created work that has marked contemporary art. From 1962 until today she has created and performed many solos, but also group pieces, installations, sculptures, photos and videos. Since the 1990s, she has been working on her biography to place her work in another time and to present its different aspects. This is an approach that she began on her own before handing over a version, for the first time, to video-artist Charles Atlas, and a second one – where for the first time she is only performing – to one of her long-time friends, stage director Michael Laub. For several years she has been teaching performing arts and has begun research on how to pass on the original work of the body artist.
Video Portrait Gallery has on show fourteen videos made between 1975 and 1998. Freeing the Voice, 1975, shows the artist lying on the ground, shouting until she loses her voice. Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful, 1975, gives an even more exemplary performance of the artist untangling her hair until it hurts, and going as far as risking her life in a series called Dragon Heads, 1989/1992. That same desire to surpass herself is seen in The Onion, 1996, where the artist eats an onion while looking up at the sky and complaining about her life. The second installation, Waterfall, is inspired by the prayers of Tibetan monks. Marina Abramovic spends a lot of time with the Tibetan community in exile in India. After twenty years of visiting their monasteries, the director of the Tibet Centre in Delhi asked her to choreograph the dance and chants of the Tibetan lama. He asked her to work with them for a European tour. Marina Abramovic taught 120 moines how to use microphones, how to enter and leave a stage, how to remember the lighting positions, how to change costumes etc... In between the rehearsals, the monks continued their normal routine of prayer and meditation. Marina Abramovic decided to film them during their prayers and that is how Waterfall came about. The sounds produced by these 120 monks from different monasteries in prayer sounds like a waterfall. As you enter the space you see twelve deck-chairs in front of the 120 monks on film. You can sit and become absorbed in the chant of enormous energy emanating from the monks.
Distribution
video installations : by Marina Abramovic
curator : Serge le Borgne
Production
Avec le soutien : du Ministère de la Culture et de la communication, Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, et des galeries Cent8-Serge le Borgne, Paris et Sean Kelly, New York
Remerciements : au Conseil général de Vaucluse