Curated by Lena Essling, Tine Colstrup, and Susanne Kleine
Will polyglot Europe (Eastern, Western, Mittel) fragment into a thousand shards, or will it be dreamed anew as a collective hallucination of syncretic secularity? This question may seem removed from a Marina Abramović retrospective, but one could argue that the grandiose, anything-goes performances from this visionary/celebrity artist propose such issues as personal, mystical choices. This exhibition, which includes sketches, archival materials, and some ninety-five works made between 1960 and 2017, places renewed focus on Abramović’s origins in then-Communist Yugoslavia (this is especially true in the accompanying catalogue). Probing “loss, memory, pain, endurance, and trust,” the curators situate the artist’s works as provocations to participation, which is the axis around which our political imaginaries must also arrange themselves. Travels to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, June 17–Oct. 22; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Apr. 20–Aug. 12, 2018.
