Marina Abramovic - Woman messaging Brest II (from the series: Balcan Erotic Epic) - image-1

Lot 625 D

Marina Abramovic - Woman messaging Brest II (from the series: Balcan Erotic Epic)

Auction 1135 - overview Cologne
01.06.2019, 14:00 - Contemporary Art
Estimate: 25.000 € - 30.000 €
Result: 24.800 € (incl. premium)

Marina Abramovic

Woman messaging Brest II (from the series: Balcan Erotic Epic)
2005

Chromogenic print on dibond. 101,7 x 101,7 cm. Framed under glass. Off-size edition, unique.

The film still Woman massaging Breast II, presented here as a large-format print, originated from the multi-channel video installation Balkan Erotic Epic, shot in 2005 by Marina Abramovic, in which the artist deals with sexual and fertility rites from the Balkans, as recorded in Serbian folk literature. In the film, sequences in which the artist in the role of a ‘professor’ explaining various rites alternate with scenes in which these rites are recreated by amateur actors dressed in traditional national costumes or, as in our picture, with scenes where the artist herself appears as the Balkan goddess of fertility. "Balkan Erotic Epic is based on my research into Balkan folk culture and its use of the erotic. Through eroticism, the human tries to make himself equal with the gods. In folklore, the woman marrying the sun or the man marrying the moon is to preserve the secret of the creative energy and get in touch through eroticism with indestructible cosmic forces. People believed that in the erotic there was something superhuman that doesn't come from him but from the gods. Obscene objects and female genitals have a very important function in the fertility and agricultural rites of the Balkan peasants. They were used very explicitly for a variety of purposes. Woman would show in the rituals their vaginas, bottoms, breasts and menstrual blood. Men would show openly in the rituals their bottoms and penises in acts of masturbation and ejaculation" (cited in: Marina Abramovic, Balkan Erotic Epic, loc.cit., p. 64). According to folkloristic understanding, the human body and its sexuality become instruments with which one strives to defend oneself against diseases, threatening crop failures or the forces of nature. In contrast to the darkness of earlier Balkan series by the artist, such as the performance Balkan Baroque from 1997, in which the Yugoslavian-born artist thematised the atrocities of war in her home country, the work Balkan Erotic Epic is characterised by a much greater lightness of narrative due to its theatrical and satirical elements.

Certificate

Accompanied by a certificate by the artist, dated April 2019

Provenance

From the artis to the present owner

Literature

Mary Christian/Klaus Biesenbach (ed.), Marina Abramovic. The Artist is Present, exhib.cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York 2010, ill. p. 178; cf. Adelina von Fürstenberg (ed.), Marina Abramovic. Balkan Epic, exhib.cat. Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Milan 2006