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Artist: Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović presents her first exhibition with Lisson Gallery China, following her major presentation at The Light Society, Beijing, in 2019. This new exhibition brings together a selection of works from the artist’s Transitory Objects series, alongside photography from her groundbreaking performances in 1970s, and a film installation. As one of the most significant artists internationally, Abramović has earned widespread acclaim over the past 50 years as a pioneer of performance art. Following this exhibition in Shanghai is the artist’s highly anticipated retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, opening in September 2023.

This exhibition in Shanghai is a landmark moment for the artist as a return to the country where she enacted one of her most iconic performances: her walk across the Great Wall in China with Ulay in 1988. Abramović was inspired by this very experience – in particular the shifting states and diverse minerals present in the ground on which she walked – to create the Transitory Objects series, which she began on her return from China and continued to develop over the following decades. The Transitory Objects series is also meaningful as it was the artist’s first series of work that involves the public’s participation. Engaging with materials such as quartz, crystals, copper, iron and wood, Abramović invites the audience to directly interact with these works, and to receive their energy – using it as a means of transit to a meditative state of consciousness. As Abramović once said, “the artist’s function is to present the work and deliver it to the public, so the public can bring it to completion”.

In addition, Abramović presents the single screen installation, Stromboli 1 (2002), titled after an island north of Sicily that is the only permanently active volcano in Europe. The installation shows static black and white close-up images of Abramović lying on the shores of the sea, her eyes closed, facing the sky. The artist remains silent and motionless for almost 20 minutes until the last wave drowns her for a short moment. In reaction to the rising ebb and flow of the tides, she changes the position of her head.

Also featured in the presentation are two black and white photographs, highlighting the durational bodily experimentations that committed to single actions, offering the audience an opportunity to re-live some of Abramović’s most physically and mentally demanding performances, withstanding pain and exhaustion in her quest for emotional liberation and mind-altering transformation. Consisting of 20 frames of photography, Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975/2010) documents a scripted scenario where Abramović parts her hair using both hands, with a metal brush in one hand, and a metal comb in other while continuously repeating “Art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful” until she is repeatedly damaging both her own face and hair. The performance is an example of how, in the early years of performance art, female artists used their own bodies to challenge the institution of art and the notion of beauty. Alongside this is another series of photographic works entitled Freeing the Voice (1975/2014), taken during a 3-hour original performance at the Student Cultural Center, Belgrade in 1975. The artist is seen lying on a white mattress with her head tilted back, screaming, until she loses her voice. Attempting to achieve a mental cleansing through pushing the limit of the three main faculties of expression – voice, language and body – her scream eventually becomes a sound object, breaking free from the body and filling the space independently.