A journey through pain, presence, and return—how Marina Abramović transformed performance art and reconnected with her roots
There are artists who challenge you. There are artists who move you. And then there is Marina Abramović— who asks you to sit still, feel everything, and come undone.
For decades, the “grandmother of performance art” has tested the boundaries of the body, time, pain, and connection. From the 1970s to today, her work has pierced audiences across continents with a radical honesty few dare to inhabit. But in recent years, something shifted. A return began. Not only to her origins, but to something deeper: a reckoning with belonging, identity, and what it means to return to the self.
Born in Belgrade in 1946 to partisan parents in post-war Yugoslavia, Abramović’s early life was marked by both discipline and a hunger for freedom. Her childhood, framed by a strict, militarised household and a cultural landscape steeped in ideology, left its imprint. So did the silence. The gaps between generations. The weight of expectations.
Art became her rebellion—and later, her ritual. In the early years of her career, performances such as Rhythm 0 (1974)—in which she stood passively as the audience was invited to use 72 objects on her body, from feathers to a loaded gun—shocked the art world and exposed the fragile line between violence and vulnerability. In The Lovers (1988), she and Ulay, her collaborator and partner, walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to say goodbye.
Her work has never been comfortable. It was never meant to be. Abramović invites audiences not to observe, but to participate—to become witnesses to intensity, silence, discomfort, endurance, transformation. Through her body, we are made to confront our own.
She has long spoken of pain as a form of purification, of stillness as the truest confrontation. Whether fasting, staring, screaming, or remaining completely motionless, her performances explore the limits of human physicality and emotional openness. But they also offer a kind of grace. Her work insists on presence in a world that runs from it.
She invites audiences not to observe, but to participate
In 2010, she performed The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she sat in silence across from strangers for over 700 hours. It became one of the most iconic performances of the 21st century—not for its spectacle, but for its simplicity. The act of looking, fully and without interruption, became a form of communion. People wept. Some described it as spiritual. Others simply said they felt seen for the first time in years.
In 2023, Abramović became the first woman in the 253-year history of the Royal Academy of Arts in London to be given a solo exhibition in its main galleries. It was not just a celebration. It was a culmination—a gesture of recognition, yes, but also a meditation on legacy. There, audiences revisited her most iconic performances. Some were re-enacted by younger artists. Others lingered only as relics: a video, a blood-stained garment, a whisper.
But perhaps the most powerful return is the one she has made to her homeland.
Abramović became the first woman in the history of the Royal Academy of Arts in London to be given a solo exhibition in its main galleries
For years, Marina’s relationship with Serbia was marked by tension, detachment, even alienation. She had become a citizen of the world—a New Yorker, a European, a spiritual pilgrim. And yet, the question of origin always remained. Not just where she came from, but what she carried with her.
In recent interviews, and notably in The Hero—a performance and photographic series inspired by her father, reimagined and staged in Belgrade in 2022—Abramović has begun to speak with more tenderness about her roots. There is no romanticisation. Only a willingness to re-enter the wounds.
She describes The Hero as her “gift to Serbia,” a gesture of healing and re-connection. In the original 2001 version, she sat astride a white horse, holding a flag, embodying silent strength. In the 2022 reinterpretation, the performance was staged digitally and projected in public spaces. It was less about her physical endurance and more about emotional presence—a meditation on legacy, memory, and forgiveness.
To look back is not easy. For any artist, and especially for one whose body has borne so much. But in Abramović’s case, it feels necessary. A full circle. A homecoming not to comfort, but to truth.
In a country still negotiating its memory and identity, her return is symbolically powerful. Not because she offers answers, but because she embodies the process of asking better questions. What do we inherit? What do we let go? What do we forgive?
As Serbia continues to define its cultural future, Abramović stands as a reminder that greatness often emerges from discomfort—that deep art comes not from answers, but from the courage to dwell in the unknown.
Marina Abramović remains an artist of endurance. Not just physical endurance, but emotional and cultural endurance too. She teaches us that art is not a distraction—it is a form of witnessing. A sacred repetition. A long exhale.
And as she returns—on her terms, with her rituals, through her silences— perhaps we, too, are invited to do the same. To listen more closely. To sit with the discomfort. To imagine a country, a world, where pain can lead not only to art, but to healing.
