Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present

For more than forty years performance artist Marina Abramović has devoted her life to art. That’s forty years in which she has plumbed the depths of her physical and mental powers, maltreated her body and pushed it to its limits. In 2010, MoMA in New York dedicated an extensive solo exhibition to this artist; the event drew more than half a million visitors.
At the exhibition, which screened videos of her early works (some created with her then partner Ulay) and staged performances reconstructed by her students, Abramović herself was also present: for three months – the entire duration of the exhibition – she sat motionless on a chair for six days a week in the middle of the atrium. One by one, visitors were able to sit opposite her and enter into a ‘mental dialogue’ with her.
This film accompanies Abramović prior to, during and after the exhibition; it also observes her interacting with curators, gallery owners and students as well as with her audiences, and shows her behind the scenes, thus providing an intimate portrait of an artist who truly deserves to be described as the ‘mother of performance art’.