Marina Abramović’s 2023 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts brought several major performance works into direct physical contact with visitors.
The presentation included archival video, installations and live reperformances involving approximately 40 performers.
Passing through Imponderabilia
In Imponderabilia, first created by Abramović and Ulay in 1977, a naked man and woman faced one another in a narrow doorway.
Visitors could pass between their bodies, making choices about direction, gaze, distance and personal discomfort part of the work.
The performance transformed entry into an encounter with vulnerability and social convention. The audience could not remain entirely detached because movement through the gallery required a bodily decision.
Mortality, endurance and controlled exposure
Nude with Skeleton placed a performer beneath a human skeleton, linking the living body with an image of its eventual disappearance.
In Luminosity, a performer occupied an elevated bicycle saddle in a cruciform position. The sustained pose tested endurance while exposing the body to prolonged observation.
The House with the Ocean View recreated a work in which performers lived on open platforms for 12 days without speaking and consumed only water.
Visitors observed ordinary actions under conditions of severe restriction, turning duration, attention and self-control into the material of the performance.
Abramović’s earlier work had repeatedly examined risk, trust, pain and the relationship between performer and audience.
The Royal Academy exhibition showed how those works change when reperformed by other bodies and encountered by a contemporary public.
Its strongest effect came from removing the safe distance of conventional viewing. The visitor’s hesitation, attention and physical presence became part of the exhibition’s meaning.