Marina Abramović @Stedelijk Museum

_about

Marina Abramović's retrospective exhibition is taking place between Mar 16 and Jul 14, 2024. I visited it on the 30th of March and took part in two performances - "Counting The Rice" and "Imponderabilia".
The visitors were invited to restrain themselves from taking photos, thus for this one I have only one photo, but will share some highlights and sketches I've made to document some works for myself.

Over 60 key works spanning five decades trace the development of the prolific oeuvre of the pioneer of performance art: from her early work, created in former Yugoslavia and in Amsterdam, to the pioneering performances with her partner Ulay and works from her solo practice, in which she is still active today.
The survey features photos, videos, sculptures, and live reperformances of four iconic performances that will be staged in the Netherlands for the first time: Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975), Imponderabilia (work with Ulay) (1977), Luminosity (1997) and The House with the Ocean View (2002). As a visitor, you are invited to take part in two performances: Work Relation (work with Ulay) (1978) and Counting the Rice from the Abramović Method.

_highlights

_the rather large exhibition was divided into several themes that were significant in Abramović's practice
_i spent two hours at the exhibition, without realising how long it took - it was nicely curated and even though there were many people, it was not too crowded
_i find it rather rare to be able to visit such kind of interdisciplinary exhibition - a lot of works, being performances, were documented and presented here; was really useful to see various ways of presenting such a versatile work 🖤
_some of the themes in her work that were highlighted: body (basically her main medium); death (she says "When death comes knocking at my door, I want to enter into that final experience consciously, free from fear, bitterness and anger. The experience of transition, of consciously passing from one state into another, is important to me."); her origin and the Balkan identity (she definitely grew up in problematic historical times and in a family of partisans, turned national heroes in Serbia); spirituality (peculiar mix with the standing towards it during the times she lived in); harm (especially in her early works). _extending the life of a performance through photographic and video documentation has been a core element of Abramovic's practice

_Counting The Rice

me not "Counting The Rice"

_a preparation exercise for her performances, Abramović uses this tool to focus
_everyone has different ways to count it
_how it works: before you start you need to decide how much you want to count and then don't give up until you're done
_for this activity, i didn't count anything; i took a pile of mixed rice and lentils and started to divide them with the pencil; instead of writing counted numbers, i decided to map the movement of the lentils away from the pile with the pencil.

_The Artist Is Present

"The Artist Is Present": sketch of how the screens were facing each other

_the presentation of this performance was nicely curated: on two opposite walls there were the screens - on one side Abramović's face looking at the person on the opposite side; thus, you could see how she and person who was sitting in front of her were looking at each other during the performance.

_Imponderabilia

sketch of Marina Abramović's work "Imponderabilia"

_links

▶▶exhibition webpage
▶▶the artist's page on wikipedia
▶▶Open Studio | Marina Abramović: Counting the Rice
▶▶The Artist Is Present