Marina Abramovic: Gates and Portals: Modern Art Oxford

Themes of spiritual transition and consciousness transformation across five decades of Abramovic’s art

Codesigned by the artist, this fascinating volume charts Marina Abramovic’s (born 1946) lifelong exploration of spiritual practice via her lengthy durational performances and the related significance of portals and gates throughout history and cultures. The gate is a structure that enables, Abramovi? says, “the entrance from one world to another”; the portal “transports you to a different state of consciousness.”
Gates and Portals guides readers through the artist’s “private archaeology” of artworks, cultural artifacts and anthropological writings that explore transitional states of being. It includes interviews with the artist and new works developed following a residency at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, in 2021. This residency informed the concept for her exhibition at Modern Art Oxford–for which the gallery became a site of passage proposing movement between states of consciousness, with visitors themselves becoming the performers.