Marina Abramović wins major 2025 global art prize for sculpture

Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović has been awarded the 2025 Praemium Imperiale Award for sculpture, one of the world's most prestigious international arts prizes presented by the Japan Art Association under the patronage of Japan's Imperial Family, alongside Peter Doig for painting, Eduardo Souto De Moura for architecture, András Schiff for music, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker for theatre and film, with each recipient receiving a ¥15 million (£77,000) honorarium.

The Artist Is Present (2010)

"The Artist is Present" (2010) was a groundbreaking performance piece by Marina Abramović at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, lasting 736 hours and 30 minutes. During this performance, Abramović sat immobile and silent in a chair, wearing either a white, red, or black dress, inviting museum visitors to sit opposite her and share silent eye contact. The performance became the centerpiece of her retrospective exhibition, with Abramović maintaining her presence for eight hours daily throughout the exhibition's three-month run.singulart+3

The piece transcended conventional art boundaries, creating profound emotional responses among participants who often waited hours or even slept outside the gallery for a chance to sit across from the artist. One particularly moving moment occurred when Abramović's former collaborator Ulay attended the performance, creating an unexpected reunion captured in widely shared footage. This work cemented Abramović's position as a pioneer in durational performance art and helped legitimize performance as a tangible art form within museum spaces. Abramović herself described the performance's purpose: "There was nowhere to go but into yourself… I wanted to give them that opportunity… but that is why they cried."youtube+2

Balkan Baroque Venice Recognition

In 1997, Marina Abramović stunned audiences at the Venice Biennale with "Balkan Baroque," a powerful performance that earned her the prestigious Golden Lion award for Best Artist. For six hours daily across four consecutive days, Abramović sat amid 1,500 fresh cow bones stained with blood, methodically scrubbing them while singing folk songs from her Yugoslav childhood and occasionally weeping. This visceral performance, which left her white dress increasingly blood-stained, served as a metaphorical act of mourning for the atrocities committed during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.hoa.ox+3

The installation featured a multimedia component with three video projections arranged like a devotional triptych, showing Abramović and her parents. The political significance of the work was heightened by controversy—initially set to represent Serbia, Abramović ultimately exhibited under the international curator's pavilion due to political tensions. Twenty-five years after its premiere, "Balkan Baroque" continues to resonate with audiences; a whole gallery dedicated to this project can be found in Abramović's retrospective at the Royal Academy, featuring replica bones in a dimly-lit room with crimson walls and matching carpets representing the "communist body."singulart+2

Ulay Collaboration and Dispute

Marina Abramović and Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) formed one of performance art's most significant partnerships, living and creating together from 1976-1988. After meeting in Amsterdam, the pair lived nomadically in a Citroën van for over a decade, developing work that explored identity, trust, and physical limits. They conceptualized themselves as "The Other" – a "two-headed body" with a phantom artistic identity that transcended individual egos.theartstory+2

Their iconic collaboration ended dramatically with "The Lovers" performance (1988), where they walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to meet in the middle and say farewell. Their relationship resurfaced in public consciousness during Abramović's 2010 MoMA performance "The Artist Is Present," when Ulay unexpectedly sat across from her, creating an emotional viral moment. However, their post-romantic relationship was complicated by legal disputes – in 2015, Ulay sued Abramović over royalties from their joint works, with a Dutch court ultimately ordering her to pay €250,000 and properly credit their collaborative pieces. The two reconciled at a 2017 retrospective event, putting their "anger and hate behind them" before Ulay's death in 2020.channel.louisiana+2