Category: Artist
Nationality: Serbian
Last Year: New
It’s a surprise that Marina Abramović has never made this list before, given that she has been one of the most consistent and influential performance artists for more than 30 years. This summer she curated an ambitious group show in Manchester; next year she has a huge retrospective at MoMA, with a biography due as well. Meanwhile Irish playwright John Breen is immortalising her in an opera he is composing – hopefully he’ll do a better job than the caricature of her 12-day fasting performance at the Sean Kelly Gallery in 2002 that appeared in an episode of Sex and the City. Not that Abramović objected: ‘It’s fantastic’, she told The New York Times, ‘the popular culture absorbing me’. That someone who gorges on honey and wine before carving stars on her belly, whipping herself and lying on a cross of ice (Thomas Lips, 1975) can hit the mainstream is saying something indeed.