In 2010, Marina Abramović sat on a chair within the atrium of the Metropolitan Museum of Fashionable Artwork for 736 hours and half-hour as a part of her efficiency piece, The Artist is Current. As she sat, members of the general public had been invited to take a seat reverse her and, fairly merely, stare into her eyes. In a fast-paced world, and an excellent faster-paced New York, it was radical, and infrequently transferring, to easily sit, stare and acknowledge.
Some of the fascinating issues about The Artist is Current was its simplicity. There have been no fancy props or particular results – simply two folks and two chairs. This performance is a recurring theme within the work of the Serbian conceptual and efficiency artist.
Maybe it’s not altogether stunning, then, that Abramović has now turned her hand to design, and particularly the design of chairs, unveiling her debut furnishings assortment at Mexico Metropolis Artwork Week this month (February 2025). The gathering, known as Elephant within the Room, has been created in collaboration with woodworking design studio La Metropolitana.
(Picture credit score: Maya Kariana)
Abramović is late to affix our video name to debate the gathering, calling me to apologise from the again of a cab in Mexico Metropolis. When she lastly seems on-screen, she assures me that, in Mexico, arriving 10-to-Quarter-hour late is regular, a lot in order that there’s an idiom for it which interprets to ‘I’m already there, however not but’.
Naturally, I am eager to grasp what attracted the ‘grandmother of efficiency artwork’ to the medium of design: ‘There’s really numerous crossover between the 2 in my work, as a result of I continually use objects that individuals can sit, stand and lie on – that they will use,’ she says. I’m reminded of Abramović’s 1974 efficiency, Rhythm 0, the place she laid out a sequence of objects, together with scissors, a scalpel, nails, a steel bar, a gun and a bullet, and stood nonetheless whereas the general public was invited to do no matter they wished to her.
‘I really like performance. I hate espresso desk books with a ardour’
Marina Abramović
‘I really like performance,’ continues Abramović. ‘I hate espresso desk books with a ardour. I hate that nobody ever reads them they usually’re purely ornamental.’ She is impressed by the strategy of the Japanese: ‘It isn’t that they do not have stuff, it’s that their stuff is at all times match for function. In spring time, they may put the spring vase on the desk. When winter comes, they create out the winter vase.’ Abramović additionally admires the philosophy of the Shakers, the Christian sect who dwell by the mantra ‘magnificence rests on utility’. Spatial minimalism, she says, permits for a ‘free thoughts’: ‘I’ve sufficient happening in my head. Vacancy is one thing that I like. Vacancy and void.’
Certain sufficient, the chairs that make up Elephant within the Room are minimal and unadorned. They’re fabricated from wooden and copper, with what appear like little sneakers on the ends of the legs.
Regardless of this, the gathering represents a domestication of Abramović’s work that feels incongruous. Practical objects have often acted as a prop to her artwork, except her 1988 assortment Transitory Objects, a sequence of objects that ‘had been there for the general public to work together with’: a copper mattress to lie on, a quartz cushion to lean on, an iron chair to take a seat on.
(Picture credit score: Maya Kariana & Mauricio Guerrero)
(Picture credit score: Maya Kariana & Mauricio Guerrero)
Abramović made these as a response to a earlier efficiency, The Lovers, an epic journey the place she walked half the size of the Nice Wall of China (roughly 2,000km) to fulfill her accomplice, German efficiency artist Ulay, within the center, the place they deliberate to get married. (Organising the stroll, nonetheless, turned out to be a maze of pink tape which took 5 years to navigate. By this level, the pair had grown aside and, whereas they agreed to go forward with the stroll, they determined that they’d meet to interrupt up slightly than to marry.) ‘After I obtained again from China, I realised that the general public had not been current – we’d been utterly alone in nature,’ remembers Abramović. ‘I began fascinated by creating one thing that the general public might take part in.’ The consequence was Transitory Objects.
Elephant within the Room might signify a domestication, however, for the artist, ‘home’ shouldn’t be an insult: ‘My grandmother’s kitchen desk was the centre of my world. Now, in America, you will have these monumental, super-luxurious kitchens, and no one even cooks. You simply decide up the cellphone and order a pizza. Folks don’t have that home life anymore, and that’s so unhappy. Our lives have develop into so sophisticated that we neglect in regards to the energy of simplicity.’
Simply because one thing is minimalist or mundane – stripped again to its most important elements – it doesn’t imply that it’s devoid of which means, says Abramović. Take her efficiency artwork: whereas some might even see it as merely current for shock worth, the artist insists that she ‘by no means [makes] artwork to impress’. ‘To me, that’s low cost and vulgar,’ she continues. ‘I create work that makes folks assume, and if you happen to’re simply shocked then you definately’re not fascinated by it.’ Equally, Elephant within the Room, says Abramović, is ‘all in regards to the content material, what I wish to say. Not about ornament’.
(Picture credit score: Maya Kariana & Mauricio Guerrero)
What does she ‘wish to say’ with Elephant within the Room? This was the place La Metropolitana, and its founding trio Rodrigo Escobedo, Mauricio Guerrero and Alex Gutiérrez, got here in. ‘They give thought to the historical past of the wooden, which ties into the historical past of Mexico. They work with indigenous folks, native artisans and deprived folks. In addition they use conventional strategies and moral craftsmanship,’ says Abramović. ‘La Metropolitana desires to inform the tales of their objects. It’s not nearly manufacturing for lodges and so forth, which is why it was so essential for me to work with them.’
The supplies used within the assortment vary from valuable wooden sourced from authorities seizures to copper recovered from cash and industrial waste. This copper, in keeping with Abramović, represents nervous and energetic programs. That is one thing of a full circle second: the Transitory Objects had been useful, however the supplies they had been fabricated from, to Abramović’s thoughts, additionally made them vessels to ‘set off bodily or psychological experiences’.
Elephant within the Room was inaugurated with a bit of efficiency artwork, additional imbuing the items with which means. After they had been launched, a dinner was held on the La Metropolitana manufacturing unit. The chairs all had completely different phrases written on the again – ‘danger’, ‘love’, ‘journey’, ‘insecurity’ , ‘concord’ – and visitors needed to decide one to take a seat on. One of many chairs was labelled ‘elephant’, and the one who sat on this wasn’t allowed to speak (as one doesn’t talk about the ‘elephant within the room’).
‘Nothing simply because it’s lovely, it must be useful,’ Abramović says. Design and artwork does not need to be lovely, in keeping with Abramović and La Metropolitana, however it does need to have which means.
Supply: Wallpaper
