In 2010, Ser­bian artist Mari­na Abramović had the hon­or of being the sub­ject of a pop­u­lar ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Through­out the show, Abramović per­formed a gru­el­ing piece enti­tled “The Artist Is Present,” sit­ting in the museum’s atri­um and invit­ing the swelling crowds of view­ers to sit direct­ly oppo­site her, in silent dia­logue. Abramović was no stranger to chal­leng­ing per­for­mances. By the time that MoMA staged the ret­ro­spec­tive, the then 63-year-old artist had engaged in count­less tax­ing exhi­bi­tions, earn­ing her self-giv­en title, “the grand­moth­er of per­for­mance art.”

In her first per­for­mance at 27, Abramović explored the idea of rit­u­al by play­ing a knife game on cam­era, stab­bing the sur­face between her splayed fin­gers with a knife and occa­sion­al­ly hurt­ing her­self; she would then watch a video record­ing of the vio­lence, and attempt to repli­cate it. Sub­se­quent per­for­mances includ­ed her explo­rations of con­scious­ness through the inges­tion of pills for cata­to­nia and depres­sion; anoth­er com­prised a 1974 incar­na­tion of her MoMA per­for­mance, where Abramović  sat pas­sive­ly before a table lit­tered with objects for six hours, invit­ing the audi­ence to put them to use on her per­son (of this piece, Abramović says, “What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audi­ence, they can kill you… I felt real­ly vio­lat­ed: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stom­ach…”)

In 1976, Abramović  met Ulay, a West Ger­man artist who would become her lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor for the next twelve years. The duo fell into an imper­son­al abyss, los­ing their self­hoods and attempt­ing to become a sin­gle enti­ty through arrest­ing per­for­mances such as Breath­ing In/Breathing Out, where they locked mouths and breathed each other’s exhaled breath, even­tu­al­ly fill­ing their lungs with car­bon monox­ide and falling uncon­scious. By 1988, their romance had run its course; in typ­i­cal­ly atyp­i­cal fash­ion, the pair decid­ed to part by walk­ing from oppos­ing ends of the Great Wall of Chi­na until they met in the mid­dle, and then said good­bye.

On the open­ing night of Abramović’s ret­ro­spec­tive in 2010, the erst­while lovers were reunit­ed. The video above shows Abramović, sit­ting and steel­ing her­self for her next silent inter­locu­tor. Ulay approach­es, and Abramović, a vet­er­an of such dif­fi­cult per­for­mances, looks up to what may have been the sin­gle most unex­pect­ed sight of the night, jolt­ing her dig­ni­fied com­po­sure. Their reunion is a deeply ten­der scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.