MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ fascinates audiences worldwide with her performances, films and, most recently, her opera project 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. What is not so well know however, is the fact that this pioneer of performance art was also a guest in Tübingen from her early years in the 1970s up till the year 2000, in the Ingrid Dacić gallery. The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Tübingen is devoted for the first time to the spiritual aspects of Marina Abramović’s work.
Linking into the tradition of European mysticism, in the past five decades this pioneer of performance art has developed an undogmatic, individual access to the transcendental that expands the religious traditions to include shamanist, alchemical and Buddhist elements. By means of selected major works the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Tübingen, curated by Nicole Fritz in close collaboration with Marina Abramović and her studio, focuses on these spiritual aspects of the artist’s work, pursuing her rite of passage – her journey to her inner self.
At the end of this development stands the, in the truest sense of the term, self-conscious artist, devoted initiator and charismatic performance teacher Marina Abramović, who passes on her experience in workshops and the institute she founded, called the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI). Her aim is to use collective exercises to bring her audience into contact with themselves again through art.
A comprehensive catalogue (German/English) will be published to accompany the exhibition, with interdisciplinary contributions by Erich Ackermann, Hartmut Böhme, Jeannette Fischer, Nicole Fritz, Antje von Graevenitz, Volker Leppin and Bernhard Pörksen.
Curated by Nicole Fritz in close collaboration with Marina Abramović and her studio