I just so happened to be in New York City last May to watch my big brother graduate from Columbia...lucky for me Marina Abramović was having a retrospective at the MoMA. Abramović is a Serbian performance artist whose career started back in the 70's
You can learn more about the performance and the exhibition here and I definitely suggest checking out the portraits and opening your mind to the idea of what performance art means.
The deal was this: Abramović sat in a chair in large open space inside the museum. Another chair was placed directly across from her and the audience was invited to participate by sitting silently in the chair and essentially "looking" at the artist for as long as they wanted. Seriously, it could be one minute, it could be one hour...it could be five hours or the entire day. Sounds kind of weird right?
It was incredible. It brings tears to my eyes even when I think about it, now, a year later.
I knew we would be visiting the museum for a few weeks before I got to New York so I was exploring the MoMA website to see what would be showing. When I came across the info about the performance I was intrigued. At the time, the museum was streaming live video of the artist and the participants looking at one another. I was hooked. My co-worker and I watched the stream for days, marveling at the unique and fascinating variety of interactions you can have simply looking into the eyes and face of another human being. I told Mike and Jeff we HAVE to go and my brother is so wonderful he made the time for it during our busy trip. We even got an amazing parking space. :-) Did you know when you park in front of the MoMA in NYC in a specific loading zone and don't read the signs carefully you get a super big expensive ticket? Yeah...that space seemed too good to be true.
You might be asking what is artistic about a person sitting and looking at another person. You might be wondering how that is art at all and I understand why you might feel that way. In my opinion it is the very definition of art because art is about the self and there is something so telling about the self by conveying emotion through your expression (or lack thereof) Art is about people and life and so many things in the surrounding world...pieces of that are contained inside of all of us.
This performance was about the artist and her connection to the audience. It was about her endurance. Abramović sat from before open until after close of museum hours for two and a half months, no breaks, no snack time, nothing more than her constant, silent interaction with the random public. For me, it was about humanity. We go through these fast lives, constantly surrounded by other people. How often do we really connect and if we did actually take the time to really connect what would we learn? What would we really see? Would we be afraid? Would we feel joy or pain? What would the other person feel while looking at us?
The artist had no choice about who sat to look at her and how long they chose to sit. Her only choice was to accept every person that decided to be a part of this process. She was without judgement.
AND the viewer, the audience that typically only is allowed to look at a piece of art suddenly becomes a part of the art piece.
Because it was a retrospective, once we tore ourselves away from the artist performance we were able to take a look at a lot of her work from years past. Some were displayed through video and others were performed by models to show what Abramović herself had performed prior.
I could write forever about the things that we saw, the shock and the awe, the disgust and the confusion, the fear and the love I felt...my artistic brain has grown very open minded especially these last ten years and I'm happy I was able to take it all in and process everything without turning away from it before actually seeing it...Yes, there were violent images and nudity. A lot of it frightened me and I felt strange and uncomfortable. Other works were mesmerizing. There were naked people that you had to squeeze by, your body pressing against theirs to get to a different part of the exhibit. I think what surprised me the most was when Jeff shrugged and boldly brushed through these naked models, no hesitation! It was me that hesitated but after I went for it I felt oddly exhilarated.
I snuck a couple of pictures when the guards were not looking (oops ) See that guy in the far left corner...yeah, they don't want you taking photographs.
You can see from above the general idea of how the performance was laid out. Did I want to sit with her? Badly. I think my world would have faded around me while I looked in her eyes and learned some secret of the universe. I think my heart would have broken and healed itself again. If I actually was living in NYC and not there for an important event in my brothers life, I would have taken a day to sit with her and see where it took me, even though the idea really terrifies me. As it was, I am very happy to have witnessed other participants and see the performance live. The streaming video is awesome and the pictures taken of the people who sat with her make me question my cursory view of every person I have ever encountered.
It was so beautiful I find it difficult to put into the perfect words to describe it...but maybe I shouldn't have to.
