After setting foot in the Royal Academy of Arts of London last September, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of her artistic career, Marina Abramović landed in Brazil and more specifically inArt Plant. The space, a huge park that hosts spectacular works by local and international contemporary artists, such as the gigantic sculpture entitled Diva by the Brazilian artist Giuliana Notari which depicts a “wounded vulva” 33 meters long and 16 meters wide, set in the earth, inaugurated this February the new work of colossal dimensions entitled Generator.
The title, taken from the 2014 work which proposed that the public deprive themselves of hearing and sight with a blindfold and headphones to bring them to a “fragile state” of body and mind Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, is also that of the new permanent installation: in this case, however, the artist proposes a black parallelepiped structure 25 meters long, 3 meters high and 2.5 meters wide.
The main feature of the work is the presence of greats quartz stones from Minas Gerais (the region of Brazil from which most of these stones are taken, ed) set on the walls, with the aim of promoting the audience’s interaction with the crystals and their energy. The artist recalled that “In this moment of turbulence in human history, we live in an era of wars, violence, poverty and warming of our planet. Rapid technological development has us get away from nature and we have lost the ability to use theintuitionthe telepathy and to remember ours dreams. We have lost ours spiritual center. The function of Generator it is not just that of a sculpture. It is intended for the public to interact with crystals and their energy, in hopes of restoring our ability to connect with nature through stillness and presence in the here and now.” The public is therefore free to rest their heads, touch and observe the stones, transmitting their energy and donating it to nature, to others, to the earth, to the whole world.
It is not the first time that we have been able to admire the works of the Godmother of the performance on the exploration of energy: in fact, we remember not only one of her most famous performances, The Artist Is Present, performed for the first time at MOMA, but also at MAY (Marina Abramović Institute) where audiences, through art, science and performance, can expand their connection with their own being and with other participants. Obviously, all done with the The Abramović methodthanks to which Marina’s followers can push themselves beyond the limits of their own body and mind, which has become lazy due to modernity, developing skills such as resistance, concentration, perception, self control and willpower: a method that not only MAI members have been able to experience first-hand, but also celebrities such as the pop star Lady Gagawho has tried her hand at this new and somewhat bizarre method of finding herself and reconnecting with her deepest self.