The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea presents Marina Abramović: Historical Works and Transforming Energy, an exhibition that, on the occasion of the artist's 80th birthday, brings together some of the most significant historical works of her career and a selection of Transitory Objects, developing a journey through different moments of her research and connecting the performative dimension of the body with the slower and more profound dimension of matter. After its presentation at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, during the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the exhibition arrives in Rome in an expanded version.
Curated by Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of the Modern Art Museum (MAM) in Shanghai, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition presents Transforming Energy within the broader development of Marina Abramović's research.
The Historical Works section, curated by Andrea Tarsia, includes several iconic works that have marked the history of performance art and the artist's practice, including Imponderabilia (1977), Balkan Baroque (1997), and The Artist is Present (2010). Through these works, the exhibition highlights the centrality Abramović placed on the body, presence, duration, and the relationship with the audience—elements that over the decades have transformed performance into a space for experience and discussion.
At the heart of the exhibition is Transforming Energy, a core group of works comprising a selection of Transitory Objects, a series Abramović has been working on for over three decades. Stone beds, structures, and sculptural forms made from quartz, amethyst, agate, and other minerals are conceived as devices through which visitors can directly engage with the work. By lying, sitting, or standing on the various structures, the public is invited to activate what the artist calls a process of "energy transmission." Thus, the work is not limited to its sculptural dimension, but is completed through the presence and physical experience of those who pass through it.
With Transitory Objects, Abramović's exploration of the body extends beyond the immediate dimension of performance to engage with a different conception of time: the geological time of minerals and the Earth. The materials used in the works are the result of natural processes that developed over the course of different geological eras and introduce a timescale profoundly different from that of human experience into the relationship with the body. The body thus becomes the meeting point of different times, energies, and forms of matter.
The artist's interest in crystals and their relationship with energy and the human body developed particularly following a journey along the Great Wall of China in 1988. During that experience, Abramović came into contact with principles of traditional Chinese medicine, which helped guide her reflections on the relationship between body, energy, and matter. In the decades that followed, Transitory Objects became a significant component of her practice, bringing into the exhibition space materials formed over the course of different geological eras and presenting them as tools for a direct and conscious relationship with the body.
The dialogue between her historic and more recent works thus allows us to explore Marina Abramović's research in its continuity, recognizing how themes such as presence, duration, the body, energy, and relationship have been constantly rethought and transformed over time. It is a journey that leads from her earliest experiences with performance to a conception of the work as a meeting space, in which the audience is not simply an observer, but an integral part of the experience.
It is also within this perspective that the celebration of the artist's 80th birthday fits in, which Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli calls an opportunity to pay homage to a "pioneer of performance art," today a leading figure on the international scene. For Renata Cristina Mazzantini , Director of the GNAMC, the combined presence of historic and recent works instead restores the richness of a research that spans the artist's entire career, giving rise to "an innovative and disruptive exhibition in the Roman context. An unmissable journey through the subversive action of performance art, aimed at profoundly moving the capital's audiences."
The decision to bring together works from different periods of her practice ultimately takes on a specific meaning, in Marina Abramović's words: "It allows the public to see how the ideas underlying my work have developed over time." It is precisely this development, made up of continuity and transformation, that the exhibition invites us to recognize: from the actions in which the body becomes the instrument and measure of performance, to the Transitory Objects, where the body encounters matter and the deep time of the Earth. A journey in which the work thus returns to being, above all, an experience to be lived.