Category: Artist
Nationality: Serbian
Last Year: 35

This year Abramovic staged her own death (with the help of Robert Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Antony Hegarty) in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic at the Manchester International Festival, successfully turning narcissism into a carefully choreographed, sublime experience. In Venice she launched plans for the Marina Abramovic Community Centre Obod Cetinje in Montenegro, dedicated to the cultivation of immaterial artforms. The Serbian performance artist, who clearly understands the contemporary era’s yearning for the ‘authentic’ performance or ‘event’, has been influential from the 1970s to the present day; she has spawned countless imitators, although most lack her unfailing certainty of vision and authoritative delivery. At the time of writing she is the subject of a large-scale retrospective at the Garage in Moscow, graces the cover of Pop magazine and has become the first artist to have a videogame made about the experience of her work – the delightfully boring The Artist Is Present, an 8-bit rendering of last year’s blockbuster exhibition at MoMA: it involves buying a ticket and queuing for a very, very long time.