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How The Artist Is Present By Marina Abramovic

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There are many things that can be said about Marina Abramovic’s works, particularly her MOMA performance “The Artist Is Present”, but I think that everyone would agree they are if anything compelling. The film that we viewed, centered around that ambitious performance, allowed us to get a sense of Marina, from her early years as a rather unknown Yugoslavian artist, her relationship with Ulay that had the biggest impact on her as artist and a person, to the late years of her career in which she found fame. The performance at MOMA was one of the most interesting works I’ve ever witnessed. In addition to having her admirers as mere viewers of her work, she found a way to engage with them in a very intense and profound way. I felt that the performance …show more content…

The end of that relationship allowed Marina to flourish in her life and work. She found an interest in fashion, grew her hair long and started doing theater pieces. She became a widely known artist, a celebrity. The piece they did together in The Great Wall of China was also a confrontation. She was able to express her inability to endure Ulay’s unfaithfulness by letting him go, even when it was clear that she still loved him. This brings me to the other film that we viewed, Cutie and the Boxer. This film also revolves around a relationship that tests a woman’s endurance of a man who has brought her so much distress. While Marina adopts endurance as art, Cutie lives her personal life in a state of endurance. Cutie and the Boxer is the bittersweet story of a genius artist who has long lived under the shadow of her husband, finally finding her own voice through her art. I’m both mesmerized and saddened by the things she had to go through in her life. Cutie had to put her own ambitions on hold as she tried to make her relationship with Bullie work, while also raising a son on her own. But as she mentioned herself, the events of her life and the hardships she had to overcome made her become the artist she is today. And that’s why her story is so bittersweet. At least we know at the end that, with all that she had endured, she has grown so much as a person over the years. She’s finally taking full control of her life and being her own

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