Marina Abramovic: The Cleaner

The exhibition The Cleaner at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade represents the artist’s return to her place of birth, where her career began, and where she last had a solo exhibition 44 years ago at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Conceived in a close collaboration with the artist, The Cleaner is the first major European retrospective of Marina Abramovic. It chronologically reviews all the phases of the artist’s 50-year career, from the works of the early 1960s to those of the present day. The exhibition contains over 120 artworks, including paintings, drawings, objects, photographs, sound works, video, films, scenography and archival materials. Among the works exhibited are the anthological works of performance art (Rhythms, 1973-1974; Lips of Thomas, 1975; Nightsea Crossing, 1982-1986), as well as representative works from Abramovic’s recent body of work (Balkan Baroque, 1997; The House with the Ocean View, 2002; The Artist is Present, 2010).

The live segment of the exhibition is presented through the re-performances of Marina Abramovic’s historical works (solo and with Ulay). Performed daily by local and international performers, Belgrade audiences will be able to see an assortment of re-performances including Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975), Imponderabilia (1977), Breathing In/Breathing Out (1977), Relation in Time (1977), Work Relation (1978), AAA-AAA (1978) and many more. In addition, the exhibition will include works that call for the active participation of the audience.

For Marina Abramovic, performance art is the art of transformation that develops through the exchange of energy between the performer and the audience. It is the art of “cleaning” that possesses the capacity to fundamentally change how one experiences the self, others and the collective, as well, as how one relates to life itself. The artist’s oeuvre attests to a constant search for methods and techniques that release the energy of humans, objects and actions.

As part of the exhibition, Marina Abramovic will hold a public lecture, and a Master Class for local young artists. The accompanying program of The Cleaner will also include lectures about performance art, guided tours of the exhibition and film screenings of Conversations with the Cleaner (2019) (dir. Boris Miljkovic), Film Notes (1975) (dir. Lutz Becker), Bob Wilson’s The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic (2012) (dir. Giada Colagrande) and Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012) (dir. Matthew Akers).

Marina Abramovic (Belgrade, 1946) is one of the greatest performance artists and a remarkable figure in the contemporary art world. She is the only representative of the 1970s generation of radical performers who is still active in the field of performance art. Throughout her career she pushed her physical and mental boundaries exploring the themes of emotional and spiritual transfiguration, creating some of the most mesmerizing performance acts to date. Working across an extremely broad spectrum of media in order to achieve her creative goals, Abramovic’s uncompromising self-exposure has always evoked both criticism and devotion. Her performances are complex structures of meaning based on the intertwining of the concrete and the symbolic, the material and the spiritual, the physical and the mental, the intimate and the public, repetition and change, the actual and the virtual.

The exhibition is locally organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade with the support of the Government of the Republic of Serbia.

The exhibition is produced by Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in collaboration with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn

Curator in Belgrade: Dejan Sretenovic (MoCAB)

Curated by Lena Essling (Moderna Museet), with Tine Colstrup (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art) and Susanne Kleine (Bundeskunsthalle).

Museum of Contemporary Art
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