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Marina Abramović retraces her career in relation to her artistic influences and her life experiences. Talking about the choice of the performance as a prioritized medium, of the importance of the relation with the audience and the energy that it generates, of the physical and mental limits challenged by the performance and of the relations among cultures, the artist traces a path which is chronologically linear but shaped by continuous breaking points. The evolution of her research aims to make the performance the most similar to an authentic life experience, able to influence the spectator in its intimacy and to transpose the private sphere in a public context.

Marina Abramović (b. 1946, Belgrade, Serbia) lives and works in New York. She began her career as performance artist in the early 1970s. Active for over four decades, her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Working in a wide range of media, she is best known for her provocative performance works, employing her own body as both subject and medium. Between 1976 and 1988, Abramović collaborated with German photographer and performance artist Ulay to create performance works that explore such binaries as male and female, active and passive, through the execution of repetitive, exhausting, and often painful actions. Abramović has continued to work independently since then, staging performative works that increasingly demand viewer involvement.

Abramović was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2008, she was decorated with the Austrian Commander Cross for her contribution to art history.