Thursday 17 November 2011
Ron Brownson
The performance artist Marina Abramović is following on from her MoMA retrospective in New York with another iteration at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow. Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, it is on view until 8 December and features approximately 50 works that overview more than forty years of her work including sound works, video, installations, photographs, solo and collaborative performance.
Klaus has posted a video introduction to the project which can be viewed here.
Here is the English version of the Garage’s introduction to Marina’s exhibition.
I met Marina when she visited Christchurch in 1981. I photographed their Witnessingperformance that she presented in collaboration with Ulay held in the Great Hall at the Arts Centre as part of ANZART. It was astonishing and traced their relationship as a couple – she stood, he was on the floor - and lit by the shifting light within the space over the period of an afternoon to a moment of darkness.
A fascinating account of their visit to Christchurch has recently been blogged by Ornery World.
Since it is three decades since Marina Abramović visited New Zealand I wondered will we ever see her here again? She is one of the world’s most enduring performance artists. All of her work is about what it means to be human.