Barilla Spa Case

Performance art is renowned for forcing audience members to assess their surroundings in new ways. Maria Abramovic is an artist whose work, which features destruction and deconstruction, is a reaction to growing up in a rigid, authoritarian household. In the book of " Marina Abramovic" which recorded interview conversations with the artist, Abramovic stated that her art emerged from an attempt to express her dreams of destruction that pervaded her growing up ( Stiles, Biesenbach and Iles 11). Abramovic was born in Belgrade and working out of New York, her works constantly tests the limits of her own body in the presence of a live audience, jarring their senses, and/or inviting their involvement. Abramovic was one of the earliest artists who specialized in performance art, and is one of the remaining artists from that first wave still issuing new work. She is renowned for her challenging of the limits of the body, and occasionally actually put her life at risk. Her focus on "body art", such as in 1977's Relations in Time where her hair was entwined with her partner Ulay's for seventeen hours straight, has helped shape the direction of that discipline. These strategies create performances with elements of repetition, gesture, ritual, and dangerous acts that engage the observer in her work.