Marina Abramović, born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, is undoubtedly one of the most important artists of our time.

Since the start of her career in Yugoslavia in the early 1970s, when she attended the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, Marina Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always been both her subject and her medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has resisted pain, exhaustion and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. Abramović's preoccupation is to create works that ritualise the simple actions of everyday life such as lying down, sitting, dreaming and thinking; in effect, the manifestation of a unique mental state. As a key member of the generation of pioneering performance artists, including Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the most historic early performance pieces and is one of the few still making important long-form works.