deFINE ART showcases leading artists, art professionals, SCAD students and alumni over the course of several days. Displaying their talents, these artists lectured and performed in SCAD Savannah, as well as Atlanta last week.
On Thursday, Feb. 24, a packed house sat attentively as they watched a small woman with a thick accent. She had just finished showing a film about her extensive performance career and her ability to change people’s minds. The woman was keynote speaker Marina Abramović, a performance artist from the former Yugoslavia with significant influences on contemporary art. Her latest piece of performance art is entitled “Homage to St. Teresa — In the kitchen.”
In the name of art, Abramović has set herself on fire, sat for more than 700 hours without speaking and has even enacted her own funeral. According to Abramović, performance art is the artist’s ability to “hate theater,” which means, that “reality” must be the ultimate goal of the performance. To test the limits of performance art is to stretch this reality.
Abramovic’s audience caught a glimpse of the many reactions that were captured during her exhibit, “The Artist is Present,” as the images played over monitors. The surreal experience was enough to bring some of those who attended the exhibit to tears. Abramovic lectured about this experience and other members of the performance art movement that began in the 1960s and its ability to transcend cultures and boundaries.
Dina Brown, a third-year fashion student who has seen Abramović’s work before in her 4-D design class, said she “found it interesting that [Abramović] goes so far with using her body as a medium and as art itself. A lot of people are not willing to make that sacrifice as to physically harm themselves for the purpose of art. It’s really moving that she would go that far with her art.”
Joshua Smith, a first-year sequential art student, summed up the lecture with these words: ”I appreciated that she legitimizes her art and that it is not just ‘willie nilly’ but actually has a foundation. [As a sequential artist] I appreciate that she is not just hitting us over the head saying this is true art but going through describing the true tenants of it.”
Click here to see videos of Abramovic and other deFINE ART artists and lecturers.
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