This talk draws on past and current research to discuss Marina Abramović’s Balkan Baroque, first performed at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. Arguably one of the most well-known art projects of the 1990s, Balkan Baroque consisted of the artist scrubbing over 1,500 cow bones with a metal brush and soapy water for six hours a day, over four consecutive days. A metaphorical act of mourning for the atrocities committed in the Bosnian War, Balkan Baroque immediately caused a stir; it went on to win the Biennale’s highest honour, the Golden Lion.
Visit the major Marina Abramović retrospective at the Royal Academy today and you will find a whole gallery dedicated to this project. In a dimly-lit room thematising the ‘communist body,’ complete with crimson walls and matching carpets, a pile of replica bones stand in for the artist’s original act of ‘self-purification.’ This talk takes the current display of Balkan Baroque in London as an opportunity to look back on what it meant for audiences at the time, and to think through what significance it might have for us now.
Biography:
Marko Ilić is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Oxford. He is the author of A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, published by the MIT Press in 2021.
Followed by a drinks reception
(open to all)
