Marina Abramovic's Upcoming Serpentine Gallery Performance May Have Been Inspired by Another Artist's Work

Art historians and curators have asked that Abramovic "acknowledge the genealogy" of her upcoming performance.

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This summer at London's Serpentine Gallery, Marina Abramovic will perform the most "radical" piece of her career. Titled 512 Hours, the artist will sit in the gallery space and visitors will come to view her while she does nothing, an idea that she says came to her in the middle of the night.

According to The Guardian, a "prestigious group of curators and art historians" have contacted the gallery and Serpentine curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to say that Abramovic "fails to acknowledge the influence" of conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll's "Nothing" project, which the artist has been performing variations of since 1996. Art historian David Joselit told Obrist that Abramovic should "acknowledge the genealogy." Dominic Rushe of The Guardian writes that "without acknowledgment, they fear Carroll’s work would be overshadowed by Abramović’s, and that Carroll would find it difficult to perform “Nothing” in the future."

Obrist and curator Julia Peyton-Jones have reportedly arranged for the artists to "have a conversation." In response to the historians, Obrist pointed to the long history of "nothing" as a subject in art and added that "Marina has never used the idea of nothing as her title...Many things will happen in the space. This piece evolves out of previous work that Marina has done. It will be very physical and interactive and performative.” 

There is no mention of when the meeting between Abramovic and Carroll will happen.

RELATED: "I've never done anything as radical as this." --Marina Abramovic on Her New Performance at Serpentine Gallery  

[via The Guardian]

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