Royal Academy seeks to recreate controversial '70s art installation that featured visitors squeezing between naked models (so what could possibly go wrong?)
- The infamous Marina Abramovic exhibition will be coming to the Royal Academy
- In Bologna, 1977, Abramovic's original performance led to the police being called
- Now, Royal Academy will hire naked young men and women for London version
- The performers will stand in a doorway while visitors awkwardly squeeze past
The Royal Academy of Arts will hire young men and women to stand naked in a doorway facing each other with visitors forced to awkwardly squeeze past them in a new version of an infamous art installation.
The original performance, by world-famous artist Marina Abramovic and her then partner Ulay, resulted in the police being called in Bologna, Italy in 1977.
Now, the performance, called Imponderabilia, will come to the Royal Academy in Mayfair in the autumn of 2020 as part of a celebration of Abramović's work.
Visitors will be forced to push themselves through a narrow gap between the naked performers.
A woman enters the reenactment of the performance Imponderabilia by walking in between a naked man and a naked woman at an exhibition in Bonn, Germany in 2018
Naked performers re-enact Imponderabilia (1977) by artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay at the Art Basel fair in Basel in 2012
The original performance of Imponderabilia, by artist Marina Abramovic and her then partner Ulay, resulted in the police being called in Bologna, Italy in 1977
The artist herself will be involved in the new exhibition, with Abramovic, now 72, overseeing workshops to select the young artists taking part in the performance.
The celebration of Abramovic will include photos, video and performances of more than 50 works from across her career.
Share this article
Show curator Andrea Tarsia said: 'When it was first performed some people just stood back … they couldn't quite handle it and weren't entirely sure of what they were seeing.
'Some went through. Some fairly charged through. A few went through a number of times, actually.'
A woman enters the reenactment of the performance 'Imponderabilia' in Germany last year. It will now come to London in the autumn of 2020
The exhibition sees a naked man and a naked woman standing opposite each other with visitors forced to squeeze past them
Marina Abramovic sits on the bones of animal legs during her exhibition at the 47th edition of the Biennale visual arts fair in Venice
The new celebration of Abramovic will include photos, video and performances of more than 50 works from across her career
The RA's artistic director, Tim Marlow, also warned that Abramovic would not be present during the entire exhibition.
He said: 'Her concern at the moment is as much looking forward to the legacy of how performance art can exist when the performer is no longer around.
'Her main concern is how her own work will be reperformed, as theatre is, as music is, in the future.
'Never say never with Marina, but one thing she won't be doing, because we won't let her … she won't be in the galleries for 80 days. Will she be in the galleries doing something? Almost certainly.'
