World-famous performance artist almost four decades ago Marina Abramovic ran the Great Wall of China– a meeting with her collaborator and lover, the artist Ulayin the middle. Now Abramović and her work are returning to China in a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Shanghai.
Titled “Transform energy”, the show is inspired by that walk along the wall. New pieces will be highlighted alongside more than 1,000 images from Abramović and Ulay’s 1988 trip.
“I return to China with great excitement with this exhibition, which is the result of that experience and includes a new body of work,” Abramović said in a statement.
The artist’s work has been exhibited in museums around the world, but never before in China. ‘Transforming Energy’ has now taken up residence on three floors of the Shanghai Museum.
The immersive exhibition focuses on “works of art and objects that actively engage the public and invite their participation,” according to the museum. It will feature numerous new pieces featuring crystals, which “serve as a source of transformative energy for both the artist and visitors.”
Abramović was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in 1946 and made a name for herself with her provocative performance art. In the 1970s, a series of numbered performance pieces were titled RhythmsAbramović lay down in a flaming frame of one wooden startaken medications that cause seizures and repeatedly cut her hand with a knife. In one of her most famous pieces, Rhythm 0 (1974), she provided the spectators with various objects and gave them free access to her body.
“I wanted to know where the mental, physical is [and] emotional boundaries,” says Abramović Tatler‘s Aaina Bhargava. “I wanted to know everything about it [the body].”
In the 1970s, Abramović moved to Amsterdam, where she met Uwe Laysiepen, who was known as Ulay. The couple would live and work together for more than ten years. In joint pieces, the artists tied their hair together and walked naked against each other. In a famous work from 1980 called Rest energyAbramović held a straight bow while Ulay held his real arrow, ready to shoot.
“Our relationship was a great love story,” says Abramović Guardian“Sam Wollaston. “It was difficult; it was hell. When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was bad.”
In 1988, Abramović and Ulay positioned themselves at either end of the Great Wall of China, the ancient 21,000-kilometer-long monument from the Ming Dynasty, and began walking. They originally planned to meet halfway and get married. Instead, the artists met in the middle and parted ways.
Titled The Lovers: The Great Wall Walkthis performance marked a “turning point in Abramović’s career,” writes Tatler. During her 90-day trip, Abramović visited villages and learned about traditional Chinese medicine, which inspired artwork now on display in Shanghai. For example, the new show features a piece called Levitation reprogrammingin which visitors are asked to apply medicinal herbs in copper bathtubs. They also get to read poetry that Abramović wrote during her trek.
“The public was not able to experience the work of the Great Wall,” she says Tatler. “I wanted to transfer my experience to [them].”
The photos of the walk are divided into four categories: “the preparation and starting walk, encounters with the locals, walking on the wall and meeting Ulay, and staged experiments and landscapes,” says curator Shai Baitel. CNNIt’s Stephy Chung.
Baitel adds that he was “overwhelmed” by the images in storage. “It is a treasure for a curator, for anyone involved in art or art historical research, [to] document [what has] not yet digitized, but exists in large quantities.”
“Transform energy‘ can be seen at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai until February 28, 2025.
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