The Art Of Suffering

Marina Abramovic: making a performance out of pain

"Other performances included brushing her hair until her scalp bled, dancing until she collapsed and screaming until her voice was shot through. "

Is it necessary for artists to make painful sacrifices in order to create good art? Marina Abramovic is the queen of painful performance art, subjecting herself to and inflicting tortures on herself for the last 40 years. Her chosen path started at Belgrade’s Academy of Fine Arts where she initially began training to become a painter. However during her time as a student she became radicalised and discovered performance art.

In 1974 she created a piece of work called ‘Rhythm 0’. This involved her presenting her naked body to a gallery of people along with a variety of different implements such as, nails, chains, olive oil, guns and lipstick. The gathering audience were invited to do with her as they pleased. From this it became clear that the audience were divided, in a sense two sides were formed, there were those who chose to protect her and those that chose to vandalise her body and manipulate her like a shop floor mannequin. Believe it or not this was only the start of things to come.

Other performances included brushing her hair until her scalp bled, dancing until she collapsed and screaming until her voice was shot through. She describes her work as a staging of her fears in order that she may transcend them. She has, she says, 'a sense of purpose to do something heroic, legendary and transformative; to elevate viewers' spirits and give them courage. If I can go through the door of pain to embrace life on the other side, they can, too.'

Abramovic has recently trained a group of young artists and performers to become ‘re-performers’ of her work to preserve her legacy. They endure various tasks throughout her own self styled ‘performance art boot camp’ during which they observed silence, slept on the floor and had to breathe in and out simultaneously. By doing this she is continuing and preserving the work of other performance artists of her era such as Vito and Ulay.