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<\/p>\nIn 1997 Marina Abramovi\u0107 was the first woman to win the Biennale\u2019s Golden Lion Best Artist award for Balkan Baroque, a gruelling performance work where she sat in a dark basement scrubbing bloody cow bones for six hours a day during the opening week in response to violence in the Balkans, past and present. Now the woman who calls herself \u201cthe grandmother of performance art\u201d is making history again. This time, Abramovi\u0107 is the first living female artist to have a solo show at the Gallerie dell\u2019Accademia where\u2014in another first\u2014her work will be installed in the galleries housing the museum\u2019s permanent collection as well as in its temporary exhibition spaces.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a bulldozer, some kind of communist warrior who says, okay, I want this space!\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s important to clear this testosterone and let some woman spirit in!\u201d However, Abramovi\u0107 declares herself \u201cvery humble\u201d before one of her most dramatic interventions into the Accademia\u2019s historic collection. This involves the juxtaposition of her 1983 photograph Piet\u00e1 (with Ulay)\u2014which depicts the artist cradling the prone body of her then partner Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen)\u2014with Titian\u2019s Piet\u00e1 (1575-76), his final masterpiece, which remained unfinished at his death. \u201cBeing next to this great work is not easy,\u201d she admits. \u201cI hope the public will not find me arrogant and full of ego, for I always believe that ego is an obstacle to creation.\u201d<\/p>\n
New momentum<\/p>\n
The title of the Accademia exhibition is Transforming Energy, which Abramovi\u0107 feels expresses a crucial strain in her work that she has been developing over several\u00a0decades. \u201cIt is something that I started a long time ago, just after I walked the Great Wall of China, to make transitory objects that the public can use,\u201d she says. Recently, this desire to actively involve her audience has been gathering new momentum. For her show at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2024-25, Abramovi\u0107 created an entire exhibition of interactive works. \u201cIt was nothing to do with me anymore. It was for the public to use the work and to get energy from the materials, the minerals, I was using\u201d, she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s really important that the public is not just a silent witness but an actual participator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of these interactive \u201ctransitory objects\u201d have now been installed in Venice, including stone beds and structures embedded with crystals, which visitors are invited to physically engage with. Abramovi\u0107 states that the \u201cthree body positions that I\u2019m always interested in\u2014lying, sitting and standing\u2014are all included here for this energy transmission\u201d.<\/p>\n
Another work invites visitors to sit before three panels coloured red, blue and yellow, and look at each colour for an hour apiece, while, nearby, a work that Abramovi\u0107 says is dedicated to John Cage consists of a row of metronomes that each take 14 seconds to make a single movement. \u201cYou give me your time, I give you experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
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Titian\u2019s Piet\u00e1 (1575-76), which was left unfinished Photo: Didier Descouens<\/p>\n
No telephones are permitted inside the Accademia exhibition, headphones are offered to block out all ambient sound and it is Abramovi\u0107\u2019s wish that visitors spend at least three hours experiencing her work. She is optimistic that many will make this temporal investment, especially younger visitors, declaring that \u201cthe public is absolutely fed up of just looking; they want to be engaged, they want to experience in a much more direct way than ever before, and especially young people. My work is very much focused on a young generation of spectators. Transforming Energy is incredibly important for me; it is my legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n