Marina Abramovic was a teenager when she saw Venice for the first time. After a long train ride from Belgrade \u2014 then the capital of Yugoslavia \u2014 with her mother, she was so entranced by the city that she burst into tears.<\/p>\n
It was \u201cso in contrast with the Communism and grayness of where I came from,\u201d said Abramovic in a phone interview. The Serbian American performance artist recalled the \u201cfairy tale\u201d vision of the Grand Canal, the buildings immersed in water, the gondolas and \u201call the flavor and exuberance of Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venice has certainly returned her affections. In 1997, Abramovic became the first woman to win the Golden Lion for best artist, the Venice Art Biennale\u2019s highest accolade. And this year, Abramovic (who turns 80 in November) is the first living female artist to get a solo exhibition at the Gallerie dell\u2019Accademia<\/a>. Some of her works will be displayed among the museum\u2019s permanent collections of Renaissance art.<\/p>\n Abramovic is one of a number of international (and, often, American) art stars with exhibitions running alongside the Venice Art Biennale (Saturday to Nov. 22).<\/p>\n The artist said she was \u201chumbled\u201d to exhibit next to masterpieces that she first discovered as a student in reproductions and textbooks, and to \u201cbe there with these works, by myself,\u201d during the installation period.<\/p>\n The show features re-enactments, projections and images of her past performances, as well as a set of interactive elements: stone beds and crystal-embedded structures, on which audience members can lie, sit or stand.<\/p>\n They are also invited to interact with \u201cImponderabilia\u201d \u2014 to walk through a narrow passageway between a naked man and woman standing on either side.<\/p>\n Asked if Venetians might squirm at nudity in the museum, Abramovic said she originally performed the work in Bologna, Italy, in 1977 \u2014 together with her partner at the time, Frank Uwe Laysiepen, or Ulay \u2014 and the audience was \u201cvery comfortable\u201d with it.<\/p>\n Ulay also starred in the 1983 performance \u201cPiet\u00e0 (with Ulay),\u201d in which he posed as the dead Christ in Abramovic\u2019s arms. The image of that performance is now on display at the Accademia next to Titian\u2019s large and unfinished oil painting \u201cPiet\u00e0\u201d (c. 1575-76) \u2014 a juxtaposition that Abramovic described as \u201cincredibly scary.\u201d (She also noted that her 1983 \u201cPiet\u00e0\u201d prefigured Ulay\u2019s death in 2020.)<\/p>\n Besides Abramovic, other American artists \u2014 including the painter and multimedia artist Lorna Simpson; the video artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa; and the conceptual and pop artist Richard Prince \u2014 also have shows in stately premises on the Grand Canal. And the 1930s London gallery of the collector and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim is the focus of a stand-alone exhibition.<\/p>\n By night, the spectacle will be in the skies above.<\/p>\n Through May 11 \u2014 coinciding with the Biennale\u2019s preview days and opening \u2014 everyone in Venice can see a work by the British light artist Chris Levine (famous for his 2008 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with her eyes closed).<\/a><\/p>\n In that work, titled \u201cHigher Power,\u201d a green, circular halo will be projected into the night sky using a repurposed military-grade laser system. According to Levine, it will be visible from space.<\/p>\n \u201cIn these darkened days that we\u2019re going through right now,\u201d he said in an interview, \u201cmy humble contribution to the big picture is by making light.\u201d<\/p>\n Lorna Simpson<\/p>\n A short walk from the Accademia is Lorna Simpson\u2019s solo show at the Punta della Dogana<\/a> \u2014 Venice\u2019s former customs house, now a contemporary-art space founded by the billionaire French collector Fran\u00e7ois Pinault.<\/p>\n For Simpson, who in 2025 had a well-reviewed show<\/a> at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York<\/a>, Venice is familiar territory. Her \u201cThree Figures\u201d (2014) was in the 2015 Venice Biennale\u2019s central exhibition (curated by Okwui Enwezor); it\u2019s a large ink-and-screen-print painting showing civil rights protesters being sprayed with a fire hose. It also marks Simpson\u2019s transition from photography and multimedia work to painting \u2014 and is on view at the Dogana.<\/p>\n Simpson said the work came about when a collector hosted her for a few weeks in a separate house and garage space converted into a studio, and left her alone to work. This was in Sonoma, in Northern California \u2014 a place where, if you ventured out in nature, there were \u201crattlesnakes all over the place\u201d \u2014 so Simpson stayed close to home and \u201cprocrastinated\u201d for the first week or two.<\/p>\n One night, there was an earthquake that Simpson likened to \u201ca jolt: the power goes out, the city is shut down, everyone is checking structures to make sure that they\u2019re sound.\u201d That quake somehow led her to dare to experiment.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of that freeness about just jumping in like that had to do with this multilayered experience of being away and embarking on new work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Simpson noted that \u201cThree Figures\u201d was \u201cvery relevant to now,\u201d because it was \u201ca kind of premonition of all the backlash against the Obama era,\u201d referring to the presidency of Barack Obama.<\/p>\n She explained that, in general, she was drawn to images with \u201ca kind of edge,\u201d and with a certain \u201cinstability in the reality that\u2019s being presented.\u201d<\/p>\n Also showing at the Dogana exhibition (a partnership with the Met) are Simpson\u2019s Arctic panoramas \u2014 paintings based on photographs and archives of historic expeditions \u2014 and a group of paintings of towering female figures.<\/p>\n Peggy Guggenheim in London<\/p>\n On the way back to the Accademia is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, an unfinished 18th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal where the American collector and gallerist spent the last three decades of her life \u2014 because, as she said, once you see Venice, \u201cthere is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1938, Guggenheim opened a gallery in a former pawn brokerage on Cork Street in London, behind the Royal Academy of Arts. The gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, stayed open for 18 months, and is the subject of a Venice show<\/a>.<\/p>\n