“An attack on Ukraine is an attack on all of us.
It is an attack on humanity and must be stopped,” says Marina Abramović in an online video message she published on the first day of Russia's invasion of the neighboring country.
Now the American-based performance artist, who was born in Belgrade in 1946 as the daughter of former partisans Tito and has repeatedly expressed her connection to Eastern Europe, is going one step further.
Ursula Scheer
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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Her current retrospective exhibition “Perforamtive” at the New York gallery Sean Kelly will be expanded to include charity auctions in favor of humanitarian aid in the war-ravaged country, which will culminate in two performances: Marina Abramović is auctioning on the online platform Artsy until March 25 5 p.m., the opportunity to be part of a revival of her famous work, The Artist Is Present.
For this, in 2010, the artist sat in silent eye contact with more than one and a half thousand visitors at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one after the other, from dawn to dusk, for months.
Now, on April 16, the final day of the show at the Sean Kelly Gallery, three people will be able to have the same experience of shared presence on a smaller scale.
With her performances, which often thematize aggression, pain and loss of control, but also symbiosis and love, Marina Avramović always wants to change the audience as well as herself. The first lot of the auction is for one person, the following two participants.
In addition to the physical encounter, the winning bidders each acquire individual portraits: as in the original performance, Marina Abramović's counterparts are captured in pictures by photographer Marco Anelli.
The proceeds of the auction will go to Direct Relief, a charity that works with the Ukrainian Ministry of Health to provide medical and long-term support to war-torn people in Ukraine.