Marina Abramović

Louisiana Channel

Performance artist Marina Abramovi? gets inspiration from nature, not from looking at other artists’ work, one exception being the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, which to her represents “the soul of matter.” In spite of the heavy bronze castings, Abramovi? characterizes Giacometti’s sculptures as immaterial, like a “disappearance of the flesh.” She relates his works to her own as a performance artist in terms of energy: “Energy is something you can’t touch … To me that kind of energy comes out of his work,” says Abramovi?. Another reason for finding Giacometti’s sculptures like ‘Walking Man’ and ‘Standing Women’ so powerful is that they are “always new and relevant to whatever art movement coming and going.” Marina Abramovi? (b. 1946) was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia and is now based in New York. She began her work as a performance artist in the early 1970s and is now regarded as one of the most important artists in the field. Her work explores the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body and the possibilities of the mind. Her retrospective 'The Artist is Present' at MoMA, New York, in 2010 gave her a wide international break-through and was followed by a documentary film in 2013. In 2017 the retrospective exhibition ‘The Cleaner’ is showed at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. The works by Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) shown in the video are ‘Venice Woman VIII’ (1956), ‘Standing Woman IV’ (1960) and ‘Walking Man’ (1960) as well as a selection of small busts, all from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s collection. Marina Abramovi? was interviewed by Christian Lund at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in March 2017. Camera: Matthias Nyholm, Simon Weyhe Edited by: Klaus Elmer Produced by: Christian Lund Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2017 Supported by Nordea-fonden