Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović, Luminosity, 1997
Re-performed for Kaldor Public Art Project 27: 13 Rooms, curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist, at Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay, Sydney, 11-21 April 2013
Marina Abramović
born 1946 in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia
lives and works in New York, US
Luminosity, 1997
Since the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered performance as a visual art form. Using the body as both subject and medium, she explores physical and mental limits in works that often ritualise the simple actions of everyday life. In Luminosity, 1997, a naked performer sits on a bicycle seat bathed in light and mounted high up on a wall. Luminosity is both physically and mentally demanding for the performer. Abramović says, “It’s really a work about loneliness, about pain and about spiritual elevation. About luminosity and about the transcendental quality of the human being in general“.
Abramović was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale and was the subject of The Artist is Present, a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010. In 2015, Marina Abramović worked with Kaldor Public Art Projects to present Marina Abramović: In Residence at Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay, Sydney.