Marina Abramovic is a Serbian artist based in New York best known for her performance art pieces that utilize herself, as in her physical body, as the subject and the medium for her art. The point of her pieces have almost consistently been about exploring the relationship between the mental and physical aspects of humanity as she has little to no regard for her own physical or mental wellbeing. In her first performance, Rhythm 10 1973, where she gathered twenty knives and one by one rhythmically jabbed them in-between her fingers till she received a cut. This was to study the mental reaction to physical pain, seeing if muscle memory would increase the time in-between wounds as the performance progressed. After twenty cuts were delivered to her, she watched the video recording that she had set up and come to realize not only the limitations of the body but how far they can be pushed when in a performative state, (Artsy, Abramovic, np). Her earlier works involved great amounts of self-harm and tremendous shock value not only garnering critical acclaim but cultural relevance. In her later pieces though she moved away from self-harm to a safer and arguably a more bizarre realm. In a recent piece …show more content…
She has demonstrated a strong theatrical dedication to these pieces and the psychological implications of humanity. She creates an intelligent conversation about how, as time has gone on through the centuries of the existence and development of humans, that there is a clear divergence from our natural state with the catalyst being our growing intelligence and need for development. Abramovic has garnered the success that she deserves and I happy to see performance/immaterial art reaching the relevance that it deserves as an art form. I look forward to the art that she puts out in the future and I have a strong desire to attend the