Marina Abramović unfiltered: On ego, China, and fashion

At 77, Marina Abramović is still pushing buttons, still making people uncomfortable – though perhaps now with a different urgency. For over five decades, she’s been the queen of performance and endurance art, putting her body and mind through extremes that have become legendary: standing motionless for six hours while the public prodded, cut, or humiliated her, walking the length of China’s Great Wall to meet her partner and collaborator Ulay, or sitting in silence for three months at MoMA, inviting strangers to connect by simply looking into her eyes. For five decades, Abramović has been art’s consummate provocateur, engaging audiences with her visceral and often physically demanding performances that test the limits of endurance and vulnerability. Yet, in her latest ventures, there’s a noticeable shift. Abramović is now asking us to turn our attention toward something bigger. At Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage this year, she silenced a raucous 250,000 festival crowd for seven full minutes with a message of peace during polarizing political times. The world, and fashion, are in crisis, she declared. Then, in Performance for the Oceans, a recent collaborative piece with the Blue Marine Foundation, Abramović stands in a red dress, on the shore of Fire Island, New York, arms outstretched like some art-world Moses, offering her ‘unconditional love’ to the ocean to raise awareness about environmental destruction. This month, Abramović will cross another frontier with her first museum show in China, at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai. The exhibit, Transforming Energy, is billed as an interactive experience where visitors – rather than Abramović herself – will take center stage, engaging with sculptures made of crystals and minerals meant to channel energy, a nod to the artist’s exploration of spirituality and physicality. The Shanghai show will also be the artist’s largest show to date with 150 works on display, three quarters of which are being shown for the first time. Meanwhile, in her latest book Abramović-isms, which will be published by Princeton University Press on October 22, Abramović offers readers a collection of thought-provoking quotations that capture her groundbreaking approach to performance art. Edited by Larry Warsh, the book distills Abramović’s philosophies on freedom, beauty, and the self, providing unique insights into the mind of an artist who has redefined the boundaries of creative expression for decades. In this interview with Jing Daily, Abramović speaks of her collaborators as well as her views on fashion and design – but not trite seasonal trends or brands. Rather, Abramović’s fashion is a statement on symbolic power and the individual. As she navigates the intersections of art, activism, and audience engagement, Abramović remains as indomitable as ever. As she continues to evolve, there’s a sense that Abramović may be less interested in testing her own limits and more focused on testing ours. How much are we willing to give – to the planet, to each other – and how much will we continue to take? Jing Daily: You recently silenced Glastonbury for seven minutes with a message of unconditional love. What kind of hope do you wish to bring? Marina Abramović: I really think that, as I said, also in this piece, that the only way to change the world is to change yourself, and we really try to do better. You know, to really concentrate. You know what we want to do as individuals to make something better? Because we always put the guilt to somebody else. We always criticize somebody outside … but you know, what do we do? JD: Riccardo Tisci designed the white peace sign-shaped dress you wore on stage. Tell us more about this collaboration and the power of symbolism. MA: Me and Riccardo already had a long collaboration in our history. He made the costumes for my new version of Boléro for the Garnier Opera in 2013. Then we designed the entire set for my opera project All Seven Deaths of Maria Callas. We were talking about Glastonbury, and he said, “Marina, this is so important. We have to do something, because fashion has lost meaning. Fashion is in huge trouble, they’re just recycling old ideas.” You know he stopped pushing to work, after Burberry. And now, he gets hundreds of offers all the time, but he doesn’t want to do anything in fashion, because he absolutely believes it is not the right time. When I told him about Glastonbury, he completely lit up and said, “I want to design the dress.” He came with this idea of the peace sign. So we started very simple, monastic, white and with open arms, you know, become “peace-able.” We started with the idea of the color red, and after we finished the dress, he called me saying the color was wrong. We had to change it and hardly had any time to finish. White – it was the right choice and it worked. And this, I like about him; he understands, you know, what fashion really means. He was the first in many ways to show more gay and transgender people in fashion [campaigns]. He was the first one who actually created for Givenchy, a haute couture brand, pieces that you wear on the street – T-shirts, jeans – to speak to a completely new generation of people. So, he’s a visionary. Our relationship is really very creative. We sit together and ideas just come right out. When he lives in Europe, he’s three blocks from me. JD: What kind of statement do you want to make when it comes to your clothes? MA: To me, the clothes are really to kind of express the individual. I was always interested in Steve Jobs and how he had 1,000 Issey Miyake roll neck shirts and it was really a statement that he actually created an image of himself of fashion that can be a uniform. But [fashion] can be so many things. I’m very interested in wearing things visionary, for me. I’m wearing the clothes, not the clothes wearing me. JD: What’s your personal relationship with fashion and luxury brands? MA: My first relationship with fashion was when I finished walking the Great Wall of China. I never had a penny and was just wearing secondhand clothes. When I sold the work in the Pompidou Center for the first time, I went to an Issey Miyake shop, and I bought a suit set, with a white blouse … And I came out and I said, “Wow, I feel so good.” That was really the beginning. In an interview in Paris, they asked me what I was going to wear and I said absolutely Issey Miyake. There was all the dressing, make up, preparations, it was so interesting, how you work in Paris. Then I went afterwards to Berlin. I was invited to East Berlin for the opening, and I wore the same as I wore in Paris … everybody was thinking that this rich bitch is trying to sell me art work, because nobody could believe that me, how I looked, was an artist, because they expect you to have to have dirty jackets, broken jeans and wear worn out boots. So, it’s very interesting. How it can, you know, deceive the people. I am not afraid to say that I really love fashion, and I like how it looks. In the last 10 years, I didn’t buy one piece of clothes – I’m just given them. I am really lucky and happy. I have been so criticized by my generation because they see it completely differently: they see fashion like the enemy. Like you are selling yourself if you have to wear red lipstick and these clothes. I have 55 years of work behind me, and I think my work is okay. I really have this luxury that I cannot be shamed about loving fashion. JD: Are there any brands that you love or dislike? MA: No, I only love the people. Those who are really originals: it’s the Comme des Garcons, Galliano, Margiela, of course, Ricardo Tisci. I call them originals – everybody who creates some new language. But there aren’t any new ones in the fashion category. The ones I don't like? I'm not going to tell you, because it creates bad energy, but it's a long list! (Ambramovich breaks out into laughter). JD: Performance art is a niche within the art world. How do you perceive the public’s evolving reception of your performance work? How do you see it progressing? MA: In my case, when you know my audience was three or four people in the 70s, 10 people was a lot, 20 and I was thinking, how can we handle it? Now, I just reached 1 billion. This – I have no words for it. I always say that, you know, I believed in the power of performance art for 55 years, but so many others gave up a long time ago. I never gave up. JD: You’ve collaborated with many others throughout your career. What makes one successful and meaningful? MA: You know, first of all, the longest collaboration I ever had was with Ulay. It was 12 years and [I had] finished at the Great Wall China, and then after I only have the temporary collaborations. I never like to have long-term durations anymore … it doesn’t work for me. If we are both creative and both give the same amount of belief and energy. Total trust is very important, when you collaborate it is not important anymore, which part is which, who is giving what – it has to be the mix, and the mix should be completely free from ego. And this is the biggest problem with collaboration with artists, because their egos are like, Himalayan! And you have to give up your ego in order to make the product better. I always say to young artists, ego is such an obstacle. If you think you’re more important than your work, then you’re wrong. You have to sacrifice yourself for the work, and you also have to give yourself pride for the work. The work is important, not you. ‘Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy’ will be on view at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai October 10, 2024 to February, 2025. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity. Jing Daily presents Jing Masterminds — a regular, exclusive interview series profiling today’s most iconic names in art, fashion, commerce and culture. Delving deep into their personal journeys, creative processes, business strategies and societal impacts, the series offers readers an intimate look at the lives and minds shaping our industries.

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Marina Abramović unfiltered: On ego, China, and fashion