Marina Abramović, still from ‘The Witch’s Ladder’ video, 2022 | Photo: Reproduction
Legendary Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic is bringing her talent for body immersion to the UK with a site-specific exhibition at Modern Art Oxford and a video installation at the nearby Pitt Rivers Museum. .
“Gates and Portals,” on view at Modern Art Oxford through March 5, 2023, marks a homecoming of sorts for Abramović. The Pitt Rivers Collection, whose works are on display until April 2, 2023, inspired the creation of his famous video trilogy. Cleaning the glass (1995), which paved the way for his 2010 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist is present.
During his most recent month-long stay at Pitt-Rivers, Abramović spent the residency curating objects from her global collection — taking a particular interest in objects that represent magical or supernatural beings — and then interacting with them on camera. These include a round pebble used in Australia as a love charm, a Nigerian fortune teller and a glass bottle said to contain a witch. In the process of choosing the museum’s objects for drawing, thinking and filming, the artist said: “I didn’t choose the objects. They chose me.”
Audience participation centers on the artist’s focus on experience Gates and entrances. According to his “Abramovic method”, the artist’s pseudo-metaphysical and standardized preparation for performance based on resistance, Gates and entrances Facilitates guiding visitors through a series of meditation exercises. Visitors exchange their phones and watches for noise-cancelling headphones as they move through each room, focusing on a ritual animation of silence in the space.
Marina Abramović, Time Energizer , from the series Transitory Objects, 2000/2012 | Photo: Fabrizio Vatieri (reproduction)
“What is really happening in Marina Abramović’s work, what the present can be, how one can fully focus on the present moment within one’s own body” Gates and entrances, Emma Ridgway. According to Ridgway, Gates and entrances It more than lives up to its title; The show takes the audience through “various forms of consciousness,” transforming perception through a sustained and rhythmic amalgamation of the tactile and the esoteric.
Abramović’s concern with “energy” stems from a wide array of influences, from Tibetan Buddhist prayer cycles to New Age-influenced contemplative thought. In a conversation with Pitt Rivers Museum curator Clare Harris, Abramović addresses a discussion of her work, noting that the exhibition at Modern Art Oxford has only two physical parts – “a gate and a portal”. It is up to the audience to collaborate with her and make sense of the show.
As virtual reality and meta-reality begin to increasingly influence the blue-chip art world, Abramović’s signature ability to focus on the digital or analog places her at the center of the cultural conversation.
Both UK shows anticipate Abramovich’s long-awaited retrospective at the Royal Academy, opening in September 2023.
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