Over her 55-year-long practice, artist Marina Abramović has pushed the limits of the physical body and toyed with the possibilities of the mind. This spans from her controversial early work in the 1970s, titled Rhythm Series, to her collaborative pieces with Ulay, and the renowned 2010 performance The Artist is Present, staged at MoMA, in which the Belgrade-born artist elicited intense emotional responses in audience members by staring at them in silence.
Abramović has since tied the threads of her work together to form The Abramović Method, a series of mindfulness techniques that can be applied to everyday life. This can involve such actions as counting grains of rice, opening and closing a door, or slowly and consciously drinking a glass of water over a 20-minute timeframe. (It reportedly even helped Lady Gaga quit smoking).
