14/05/2026
What happens to performance when the artist’s body becomes memory, ritual or even a digital presence?
Marina Abramovic’s presence at Venice this year is deeply symbolic.
Transforming Energy, presented at Gallerie dell’Accademia alongside the Venice Biennale, marks Abramović’s 80th birthday - and another historic first:
she has become the first living female artist in the museum’s 250-year history to receive a major solo exhibition. (Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia)
This exhibition is built around transformation through ritual. Quartz, amethyst, silence, slow breathing, sensory isolation.
No cameras.Headphones with no sound.
Because for Abramović, transformation begins when distraction ends. And before you even enter, the performance has already started.
A digital figure dressed in red moves slowly alongside a timeline of her artistic life - part avatar, part guide, part ghost. A meditation on what remains of the artist… when presence outlives the body.
And yes - some of her most iconic works are here too:
Balkan Baroque (1997),Rhythm 0 (1974),Imponderabilia (1977),Pietà with Ulay,and The Artist Is Present (2010). (exhibitionary)
Because Abramović’s core idea has never changed: the viewer is no longer just an observer. The viewer becomes part of the work.
