The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

One can’t talk about avant-garde art without mentioning Marina Abramovic. The Serbian artist carved a name for herself in the art world through her cathartic, sometimes disturbing performances. Her goal is to create art that makes us slightly uncomfortable, and in the process, to prompt us to question why we feel these negative emotions.

The artist’s “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” is not nearly as difficult to watch as some of her early pieces, but it elicits many of the same emotions in the audience. Abramovic directed the performance art piece alongside Robert Wilson, using actor Willem Dafoe as a main narrator.

The lines in the piece were taken directly from Abramovic’s personal diaries. At one point, a character sings, “Why must you cut yourself? Do you know it hurts me to see you suffer?” The performance plays on themes conveyed in many of Abramovic’s earlier works, all with a dream-like, ethereal quality that is as beautiful as it is deeply unsettling.

The piece follows Abramovic through her life story, beginning with her fascinating relationship with her mother, and ending with her “death.”

The piece follows Abramovic through her life story, beginning with her fascinating relationship with her mother, and ending with her “death.” Abramivoc is still alive today, so the death and funeral she shows in the work is entirely fictional.

When talking about the piece, Willem Dafoe explained that director Robert Wilson managed to take some of the more macabre elements of Abramovic’s memories and transform them into something gorgeous and scenic. Dafoe says the inspirations were “horrible, but he always flips them and found humor in them.”

Credit: watermillcenter.org

This humor and lightness is what makes “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” so compelling for the audience. Given the words and the memories expressed in her diaries, it would be too easy for a director to make the performance dark and dreary; instead, Wilson and Abramovic create a feast for the eyes. Clouds drench the stage floor, making it appear as though the actors are floating in the sky. Winged cameos from people on stilts float behind a woman dressed in red, lying casually on top of a miniature house frame. All of these symbolic, larger-than-life images serve to make the audience feel as though they are watching a dream as it takes place.

It’s like watching a full life distilled down to a short performance, warts and all.

Abramovic faces the idea of her impending death unflinchingly. This is not the kind of artwork that she likely could have done when she was a young woman; this takes on the perspective of someone who has lived decades of life, gleaning wisdom from her past. It’s like watching a full life distilled down to a short performance, warts and all.

Her work mimics the philosophies of nihilism to a degree, showing that the body will eventually decay, but that this decay supports all other forms of life. Her art allows each of us to take a step back from our daily realities, reminding us that death is a natural part of the life cycle, and that everything from animals to plants to the soil beneath our feet relies on our ultimate decay.

Take a look at a clip from “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” below: