Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović during the 2012 Vienna International Film Festival
Born	(1946-11-30) November 30, 1946 (age 70) Belgrade, PR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia
Education	Academy of Fine Arts, Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb
Known for	Performance Art, Body Art
Notable work	Rhythm Series (1973–1974) Works with Ulay (1976–1988) Balkan Baroque (1997) The Artist is Present (2010)
Movement	Conceptual art
Website	"http://www.marinaabramovic.com" "http://www.mai-hudson.org"

Marina Abramović (Serbian Cyrillic: Марина Абрамовић, Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [maˌrǐːna abˈrǎːmoʋit͡ɕ]; born November 30, 1946) is a Yugoslavia-born performance artist. Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over three decades, Abramović has been described as the "grandmother of performance art." She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body."

Abramović was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on November 30, 1946. Her great uncle was Serbian Patriarch Varnava of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Both of her parents were Yugoslav Partisans during the Second World War. Her mother was Danica Rosić and her father was Vojin Abramović. After the war, Abramović's parents were "national heroes" and were given positions in the post-war Yugoslavian government. In an interview, Abramović described her family as having been "Red bourgeoisie."

Until she was six years old, Abramović was raised by her grandparents. Her grandmother was deeply religious and Abramović "spent my childhood in a church following my grandmother's rituals – candles in the morning, the priest coming for different occasions." At age six, when Abramović's brother was born, she began living with her parents and took piano, French, and English lessons. While she did not take art lessons, she took an early interest in art and enjoyed painting as a child.

As a child, Abramović's mother beat her. In an interview published in 1998, Abramović described how her "mother took complete military-style control of me and my brother. I was not allowed to leave the house after 10 o'clock at night till I was 29 years old. ... [A]ll the performances in Yugoslavia I did before 10 o'clock in the evening because I had to be home then. It's completely insane, but all of my cutting myself, whipping myself, burning myself, almost losing my life in the firestar, everything was done before 10 in the evening."