{"id":593196,"date":"2026-08-14T16:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T16:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593196\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T16:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T16:28:11","slug":"ive-never-done-anything-like-this-in-my-life-marina-abramovic-on-making-art-with-balloons-marina-abramovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593196\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve never done anything like this in my life\u2019: Marina Abramovi\u0107 on making art with balloons | Marina Abramovi\u0107"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oversized inflatable blades of grass graze my face as I wind a path through the glowing white gallery space. Little papery squares of snow blow, some sticking to my hair. The path through the room curves so that only what is right in front of me is visible: initially, it seemed like I would reach the far side of the room in mere seconds but still my journey, magically, continues. I am at Snowy\/Windy\/Spring on Planet Z, the latest installation by the performance artist Marina Abramovi\u0107<\/a>. It opened earlier this month at New York\u2019s newly opened Balloon Museum<\/a>, which bills itself as \u201cthe first permanent home for inflatable art\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never done anything like this in my life,\u201d a smiling Abramovi\u0107 said, speaking on Zoom from her Manhattan apartment. \u201cBut if you give me an assignment then I\u2019ll try to see what I can do with it.\u201d As she began researching balloon art her first thought was that it was \u201cso kitschy \u2013 basically for kids and games\u201d. However, the more she contemplated the balloon, the more she saw its resonance with her own practice. \u201cYou put air in it, and at some point the air comes out. Or you pinch it and it disappears. The temporality of this is very close to what I\u2019m doing: performance art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the success of a 2023 pop-up in New York, the Rome-born Balloon Museum chose the city for its flagship. It rented and revamped the hollowed innards of Jean-Georges\u2019s ill-fated Tin Building, replacing the chichi food hall with an inaugural exhibition titled Daydream, which presents 14 installations from artists including Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed<\/a>, Balloon Museum mainstay Karina Smigla-Bobinski and the commercial AV installation studio Onionlab.<\/p>\n

Rendering of Abramovi\u0107\u2019s Snowy\/Windy\/Spring on Planet Z at the Balloon Museum. Photograph: Courtesy of Balloon Museum<\/p>\n

The installations I liked best were those that destabilized me: Swiss composer and artist Thom Kubli\u2019s Black Hole Horizon showed oversized gramophone-style horns that bellowed resonant sounds and spat out soap bubbles. To experience the work of Boris Acket, a Dutch artist, I lay on a padded floor, hypnotized by a fabric wing that revealed and then obscured my reflection in the mirrored ceiling.<\/p>\n

Oh, the mirrors. As is the case at many of these immersive sites, the Balloon Museum is full of them, and it sometimes felt as if the museum was tailoring the installations to meet visitors\u2019 desires to take selfies. (My tour guide insisted that all the mirrors were the artists\u2019 own choices.)<\/p>\n

At her institute in Greece, Abramovi\u0107 asks attenders to walk through the forest backward using a hand mirror to see, challenging people to disorient themselves and submit to slowness. But her installation at the Balloon Museum is among those that forgoes reflective surfaces. Before entering Planet Z, I donned wireless noise-canceling headphones through which the artist recited the names of exoplanets in a slow monotone. This personal soundscape added to the sense that I wasn\u2019t only moving through an alien space, but that I was somehow outside of earthly time too. As Abramovi\u0107 said: \u201cI\u2019m giving you the work, but you have to give me time. This is the exchange. If you invest yourself into the work, then you have an experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we speak she is dressed in red, a color that she\u2019s said she wears to energize her. After many years of performing, the now-79-year-old thinks \u201cit\u2019s time for the public to have a direct experience\u201d of the kind of presentness she\u2019s advocated for throughout her career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really love the completely random propositions people give to me,\u201d Abramovi\u0107 chuckles. In the past couple years, she\u2019s applied her approach to products such as olive oil and a series of tinctures, plus a facial lotion. Since 2002, she\u2019s created arty espresso cups with the coffee purveyor Illy. She\u2019s appeared in a video<\/a> by Jay-Z inspired by her blockbuster MoMA retrospective The Artist Is Present. The Balloon Museum is just another challenge.<\/p>\n

Abramovi\u0107 with her ex partner Ulay at The Artist Is Present at MoMA, New York, 2010. Photograph: Patrick McMullan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Abramovi\u0107 compares her taking on these projects to Renaissance artists who were commissioned by the clergy and aristocracy. Most of the time, the patrons wanted the depictions of the same conventional pieces: the Madonna and Child or the crucifixion of Christ. \u201cHow many of these crucifixions were made for just a few incredible masterpieces?\u201d she asks. \u201cI like it when a team gives you very strict rules, then you have to make a masterpiece out of them. It\u2019s very difficult to do. Sometimes you completely fail, and failure is a very good thing. It\u2019s about courage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberto Fantauzzi, the Balloon Museum director, hopes that the institution will split the difference between kid-friendly \u201cplaygrounds\u201d such as New York\u2019s Museum of Ice Cream and traditional art institutions. \u201cWe are completely in the middle, and this is our strength,\u201d he said, as we spoke beside the museum, overlooking the wide-eyed inflatable outdoor sculptures that have become its mascot (you can buy plushy keychain versions in the gift shop).<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t seen the final result yet,\u201d Abramovi\u0107 told me when I asked her about her response to Planet Z. I knew she wouldn\u2019t say if she felt she\u2019d \u201cfailed\u201d or succeeded; when we speak, she recounted a performance she knew in her stomach was a failure \u201cright away\u201d, but refused to say the name or year. It was \u201cfamous\u201d and beloved, but the thought of it made her sick. \u201cI don\u2019t care what the public says or the critics say,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Balloon Museum is fun, sure. I smiled; at times I felt disarmed by the sense of wonder evoked by some pieces and the contemplative quiet offered by others. I don\u2019t doubt that if I were a child, it might have opened me to possibilities of contemporary art. But I left and the levity dissipated; I was unchanged. The experience had been consumed.<\/p>\n

But what did I expect? As Abramovi\u0107 said in a droll tone when I asked her my final questions about the show: \u201cWhat else do we need to talk about? I mean, it\u2019s just the Balloon Museum.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oversized inflatable blades of grass graze my face as I wind a path through the glowing white gallery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-593196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}