The Royal Academy of Arts in London will present the first major solo survey in the UK of internationally acclaimed Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović this September 2023.

The exhibition, arranged in close collaboration with the artist, will showcase her practice over five decades through photographs, videos, objects and installations. It will also feature live reperformances of four of Abramović’s seminal performance pieces. Abramović is known for pioneering the use of the live body in her work, consistently testing the limits of her own physical and mental tolerance.

The exhibition will be structured around different themes in Abramović's work, including Public Participation, Body Limits, and Absence of the Body. The exhibition will also explore the artist's origins in the former Yugoslavia and how Communist ideals informed her practice. Abramović's work often explores the transformative experience of performance art and equates this with different spiritual traditions. The exhibition will conclude with reperformances of The House with Ocean View, a 12-day performance that Abramović completed in New York in 2002, which involved fasting and ritualizing everyday actions to the bare conditions of living.

Abramović's work has had a significant impact on performance art and has propelled it from its experimental beginnings to the mainstream. The artist has used her own body as her medium, living her life through her work. Through her experiences of different cultures, Abramović became interested in how feats of endurance act as vehicles towards a mental leap of faith, a transcendence that goes beyond one’s own physical limitations.

Click here for more Abramović events in London in October 2023.

Date: 23 September 2023 – 1 January 2024. Location: Main Galleries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: From £23. Concessions available. Book now.