Performance Art As Life And Death: Marina Abramovic’s Masterclass At Kochi-Muziris Biennale

When 80-year-old Marina Abramovic walked into the Samudra Convention Centre on Willingdon Island in Kochi, nearly a thousand art lovers rose as one, their applause filling the hall. Time seemed to slow down as the pioneer of performance art—frail in frame yet formidable in presence—took her place on stage.

After a brief introduction by Biennale curator Nikhil Chopra, Abramovic sat alone at the podium, a familiar solitude that has long defined her work. Before speaking of performance art, she spoke of India — of her deep attachment to the country, and of an unease she feels at its drift towards Westernism.

“I promise you that everyone sitting here will come to know what performance art is after my lecture,” she said. The words were met with thunderous applause. But the promise came with a caveat.

She asked the audience to sit upright, legs uncrossed, eyes closed. Then, slowly, she began to count—twelve deliberate breaths in and out. The cavernous hall fell silent, surrendering itself to the rhythm of breath.

This marked an entry point. What followed was an invitation—almost a challenge—to feel the politics, the pain, and the endurance that form the very grammar of performance art.

For nearly two hours, Abramovic held the hall in a quiet spell. Her lecture unfolded in fragments—video clips flickering across the screen, photographs suspended in silence—each frame a testament to the extremities of performance art.

Among them was the stark, durational work of Tehching Hsieh—also known as Sam Hsieh—the Taiwanese-born artist who once committed himself to a year-long performance, binding life itself to art through relentless endurance. The images lingered.

“Performance art is the most difficult of arts. Art is a matter of life and death,” Abramovic said, her voice steady as the clippings played behind her. For performance artists, she insisted, sacrifice is not metaphor but method. The body is the medium; time is the material; risk is the language.

“The energy artists derive comes from the audience,” she added. And as she moved from slide to slide—each performance harsher, more intimate than the last—the exchange between stage and spectators became palpable. The hall was no longer merely watching; it was participating.

From there, Abramovic widened the lens. Performance art, she suggested, does not live in isolation; it seeps, quietly and persistently, into other forms—into cinema, music, even fashion. Its vocabulary of risk, ritual, and presence has travelled far beyond the stage.

She spoke of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain, its surreal, symbolic imagery echoing the theatrical intensity and spiritual provocation of performance art. She invoked the work of fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, whose poetic, conceptual creations transform garments into moving sculptures, blurring the line between runway and performance.

In Abramović’s telling, performance art was not a marginal practice but a pulse—one that has altered the grammar of contemporary creativity, shaping how artists across disciplines.

In her interaction with the press, Abramovic spoke about Mahatma Gandhi’s influence on her understanding of endurance, discipline, and moral courage. The idea of suffering as strength, she suggested, resonated deeply with her own practice.

Born in Belgrade during the time of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, she recalled how her early curiosity about India was shaped by the political camaraderie between Tito and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Over the years, that curiosity grew into a connection—into repeated visits, spiritual inquiry, and a sustained engagement with the country’s spiritual quest. Abramovic spoke about visiting Gaya, but was alarmed at what she called India’s drift towards Western culture. She explained the pains she took to treat performance as an art. “Almost six decades I strived to convince the world that performance is art.” She said. The statement did not carry bitterness; it carried endurance. Behind it lay years of testing the body, confronting institutions, and standing alone in rooms where silence was both medium and message.