The Artist is Present

The social dimensions of the body are the center of Marina Abramović’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. For over forty years, the queen of performance art has chosen to objectify her body in her work. While egocentricity is certainly present -- the artist's name covers the entire wall at MoMA's sixth floor entrance, and the very title of the show makes plain its singular focus -- the assembled works immediately upend that reductive first assumption. One of the many videos documenting the artist's past performances shows Abramović screaming savagely in front of an audience until her voice dies. Abramović was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia during Tito’s dictatorship; it could be argued that in her early work, she chose to deliberately hurt herself as a way of transcending the physical and emotional barriers of her repressive society. While this is undoubtedly brave in its way, the question is whether it's interesting for the viewer. Unfortunately, that question remains unanswered; in comparison to de Sade and Bataille's extensive, in-depth musings on the topic, Abramović’s retrospective amounts to mere quibbles. The most interesting aspect of the show was its most discussed aspect: the artist herself sat silently in the middle of MOMA’s atrium the entire time the museum was open, waiting for whoever was valiant enough to take part in the routine. Charged with emotionality and stamina, the scene communicated a new avenue of artistic experiment and illustrated the barriers between representation and presentation.