[3] She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body".

After cutting herself ten times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging past and present.

Burning the communist five-pointed star or pentagram represented a physical and mental purification, while also addressing the political traditions of her past.

At first, due to the light and smoke given off by the fire, the observing audience did not realize that the artist had lost consciousness from lack of oxygen inside the star.

In Part I, which had a duration of 50 minutes, she ingested a medication she describes as 'given to patients who suffer from catatonia, to force them to change the positions of their bodies.'

By the end of the performance, her body was stripped, attacked, and devalued into an image that Abramović described as the "Madonna, mother, and whore.

[4] Abramović's art also represents the objectification of the female body, as she remains passive and allows spectators to do as they please to her; the audience pushes the limits of what might be considered acceptable.

[29] The work of Abramović and Ulay tested the physical limits of the body and explored male and female principles, psychic energy, transcendental meditation, and nonverbal communication.

They each walked the Great Wall of China, in a piece called Lovers, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle.

She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the Great Wall has been described as a "dragon of energy".

It took the couple eight years to acquire permission from the Chinese government to perform the work, by which time their relationship had completely dissolved.

At her 2010 MoMA retrospective, Abramović performed The Artist Is Present, in which she shared a period of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her.

Although "they met and talked the morning of the opening",[34] Abramović had a deeply emotional reaction to Ulay when he arrived at her performance, reaching out to him across the table between them; the video of the event went viral.

Cleaning the Mirror consisted of five monitors playing footage in which Abramović scrubs a grimy human skeleton in her lap.

This was originally installed in the Zerynthia Associazione per l'Arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy, and included white gallery walls with "enigmatically violent recipe instructions" painted in pig's blood.

Spirit Cooking later evolved into a form of dinner party entertainment that Abramovic occasionally lays on for collectors, donors, and friends.

[45] In this piece, Abramović vigorously scrubbed thousands of bloody cow bones over a period of four days, a reference to the ethnic cleansing that had taken place in the Balkans during the 1990s.

"[50] During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed The Artist Is Present,[51] a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.

Due to the strenuous nature of sitting for hours at a time, art-enthusiasts have wondered whether Abramović wore an adult diaper in order to eliminate the need for bathroom breaks.

Abramović concluded the performance by slipping from the chair where she was seated and rising to a cheering crowd more than ten people deep.

[57] The Italian photographer Marco Anelli took portraits of every person who sat opposite Abramović, which were published on Flickr,[58] compiled in a book[59] and featured in an exhibition at the Danziger Gallery in New York.

[62] In 2013, Dale Eisinger of Complex ranked The Artist Is Present ninth (along with Rhythm 0) in his list of the greatest performance art works.

The five featured artists – also including Swoon, Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, and Nancy Spero – "each possess a passion for making work that is inseparable from their devotion to New York", according to the publisher.

A world premiere installation by Abramović was featured at Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park as part of the Luminato Festival in June 2013.

Then came the more conventional part two: "Entertainment", during which Abramović took to the stage to make a speech before watching English singer and visual artist ANOHNI perform the song "My Way" while wearing a large black hood.

The show's episode, entitled "Waiting for the Artist", starred Cate Blanchett as Isabella Barta (Abramović) and Fred Armisen as Dimo (Ulay).

Originally set to open on September 26, 2020, her first major exhibition in the UK at the Royal Academy of Arts was rescheduled for autumn 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"[76] On reviewing this exhibition Tabish Khan, writing for Culture Whisper, described it thus: “It’s intense, it’s discomfiting, it’s memorable, and it’s performance art at its finest".

Gaga's work with Abramović, as well as artists Jeff Koons and Robert Wilson, was displayed at an event titled "ArtRave" on November 10.

[101] Furthermore, both have collaborated on projects supporting the Marina Abramović Institute, including Gaga's participation in an 'Abramović Method' video and a nonstop reading of Stanisław Lem's sci-fi novel Solaris.