SHANGHAI (AFP) – Crowds flocked to Serbian artist Marina Abramovic’s first-ever Chinese show in Shanghai recently, where they were encouraged to become part of the artworks in an “absolutely fully interactive” spectacle.
Abramovic, 77, made her name as a pioneering conceptual and performance artist with feats including a 90-day walk along the Great Wall of China in 1988, but this show – her largest ever – is her first in the country.
“I never thought she would exhibit in China,” visitor Nikki Yang, 43, who had previously seen Abramovic’s work in New York, told AFP.
“The latitude and perspective of (her work) are incredible, I think she’s great.”
Abramovic has said the exhibition, entitled Transforming Energy, is “very different than any show ever made”, and “very radical”.
It features videos and photos from the artist’s Great Wall walk, as well as a selection of new pieces embedded with Brazilian crystals.
Abramovic is best known for her performance work, including 2010’s The Artist is Present, in which she sat unmoving across a table from more than 1,500 visitors over months at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In the new exhibition, hundreds of visitors were transformed into performers themselves, urged to follow the instructions that accompany most of the artwork.
“The artwork is incomplete unless the audience is connecting to it… each and every item of this exhibition is inviting our audience to participate in it,” exhibition curator Shai Baitel told AFP.
As part of the artwork Counting the Rice, visitors sat at small tables and separated the black and white grains in a mound of rice, counting the number of each colour and writing their results on a piece of paper they were instructed to take home.
Visitors to one floor of the exhibition were asked to lock their phones away and don noise-cancelling headphones, while they performed actions like repeatedly opening and closing a door or immersing themselves in a bathtub filled with dried flowers.
Yang Shangxuan, a 24-year-old visitor who said he first learned about Abramovic at school, said he was especially struck by one work that invited visitors to stand in front of wooden poles holding up crystals, in a room strewn with fragrant wood chips.
“I closed my eyes to feel the energy of the crystals, and even though I couldn’t feel that, I felt very relaxed,” he told AFP.
