Marina Abromovic Quotes

There's not any subject the public doesn't know about me. I don't have secrets, and this is so liberating because this makes me free.

- Marina Abromovic

All the aggressive actions I do to myself I would never dream of doing in my own life - I am not this kind of person. I cry if I cut myself peeling potatoes. I am taking the plane, there is turbulence, I am shaking. In performance, I become, somehow, like not a mortal.

- Marina Abromovic

One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn't pay electricity.

- Marina Abromovic

In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible. The more I think about energy, the simpler my art becomes, because it is just about pure presence.

- Marina Abromovic

After my performance 'The Artist is Present (2010)' at MoMA in New York, many scientists became interested in why so many people who sat across from me began to cry. I was incredibly moved by this experience also, and was very curious to know what happens in our brains when we spend time not talking, just looking at one another.

- Marina Abromovic

I hate studios. A studio is a black hole. I never use a studio to work. It's very artificial to go to a studio to get new ideas. You have to get new ideas from life, not from the studio. Then you go to the studio to realize the idea.

- Marina Abromovic

From a very early time, I understood that I only learn from things I don't like.

- Marina Abromovic

Of course I dream to have this perfect man who does not want to change me. And I'm so not marriage material, it's terrible. But my dream is to have those Sunday mornings, where you're eating breakfast and reading newspapers with somebody.

- Marina Abromovic

I have always staged my fears as a way to transcend them.

- Marina Abromovic

Good art is never made in studio. Good art I make in life.

- Marina Abromovic

I grew up with my grandmother because my parents were making careers and didn't have much time for me. She was a highly religious Serbian Orthodox, spending most of her time in church. It's a great mix, and I use all these elements in my work.

- Marina Abromovic

I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion; on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.

- Marina Abromovic

I have the greatest respect for Aborigine people, to whom I owe everything. The time I spent with members of the Pijantjatjara and Pintupi tribes in Australia was a transformative experience for me and one that has deeply and indelibly informed my entire life and art.

- Marina Abromovic

Every party is the same: too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.

- Marina Abromovic

Unconditional love with someone you've never met is a straightforward feeling that is so overwhelming and fulfilling.

- Marina Abromovic

The only time I really feel tired and old is when I look back; I always like to look just in the front of me. I'll always feel like I didn't finish enough, such a short time is left, and there's still so much to do.

- Marina Abromovic

If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they're fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave.

- Marina Abromovic

I change so many houses and places where I live; I change them like I change socks. I don't have this absolute, kind of, how you say, attachment. My brother, if he just has to go to holiday to sleep in different bed, for him it is a disaster. I can sleep under this table or in a five-star hotel; I don't care.

- Marina Abromovic

Yes, I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.

- Marina Abromovic

When you have heartbreak, what's important is that you don't go halfway. Go all the way down. Don't take pills that keep you in limbo. Cry out all the feelings. Then your own energy for life will put you up again. You become stronger.

- Marina Abromovic

I am thrilled Lady Gaga has helped to teach her audience about long durational work and performance art.

- Marina Abromovic

When people ask me where I am from, I never say Serbia. I always say I come from a country that no longer exists.

- Marina Abromovic

I don't have tattoos, I have scars!

- Marina Abromovic

I have this exercise that I propose to everybody: Hug a tree and complain for a minimum 15 minutes. Be yourself, and do something that you really feel deeply.

- Marina Abromovic

I had three abortions because I was certain that it would be a disaster for my work.

- Marina Abromovic

I don't think anyone does anything from happiness. Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative. You're not creative from happiness, you're just happy. You're creative when you're miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness does not need to transform.

- Marina Abromovic

I want people to come to me open and vulnerable. When they come to the gallery, they have to leave their watches, their computers, their Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, because we are so incredibly used to technology, and I wanted to remove that.

- Marina Abromovic

When I taught art, I was always asked, 'How do you know you're an artist? What makes you an artist?' And to me, it's like breathing. You don't question if you breathe; you have to breathe. So if you wake up in the morning, and you have to realize an idea, and there's another idea, and another, maybe you are really an artist.

- Marina Abromovic

I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris.

- Marina Abromovic

I can explain my work to the cleaner or the president; it's all the same to me. I am very communist in this way.

- Marina Abromovic

People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one.

- Marina Abromovic

I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long.

- Marina Abromovic

I've been criticized by my generation, artists from the '70s - and there's nothing more tragic than artists from the '70s still doing art from the '70s - because I blur all these borders between fashion and pop.

- Marina Abromovic

I had difficult mother, difficult childhood like she had. She is Sagittarius like I am. I almost died from broken heart because of love. And she really did.

- Marina Abromovic

To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.

- Marina Abromovic

There's plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It's simple. Love, family, children - a woman doesn't want to sacrifice all of that.

- Marina Abromovic

Aborigines are not just the oldest race in Australia; they are the oldest race on the planet. They look like dinosaurs.

- Marina Abromovic

I'm not feminist, by the way. I am just an artist.

- Marina Abromovic

To be in a magazine when you're 20 is okay, but when you do it when you're 65, it's much more fun!

- Marina Abromovic

My mother and father were partisan national heroes: I learned sacrifice and discipline from them and that a private life is not as important as the message you want to leave.

- Marina Abromovic

I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad.

- Marina Abromovic

The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit. We can put the human spirit down so easily.

- Marina Abromovic

I am plenty lonely in hotel rooms.

- Marina Abromovic

I face so much jealousy, and I am incredibly upset about it.

- Marina Abromovic

I give people a space to simply sit in silence and communicate with me deeply but non-verbally.

- Marina Abromovic

If I'm not nervous, I'm nervous. You never know how people are going to receive the work.

- Marina Abromovic

I prepare a lot. For 'The Artist Is Present,' it took me a year to teach my body not to produce acids.

- Marina Abromovic

It's so easy to do things you like. But then, the thing is, when you're afraid of something, face it; go for it. You become a better human being.

- Marina Abromovic

There are good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called men.

- Marina Abromovic