Marina Abramović is once again reshaping the boundaries of contemporary art history, this time with a landmark exhibition in Gallerie dell’Accademia. Titled Transforming Energy, the exhibition marks a historic moment for the Venetian institution as its first major solo presentation dedicated to a living woman artist, a significant milestone not only for Abramović herself, but for the broader history of museum representation.
Presented alongside the Venice Biennale, the exhibition places Abramović’s radical performance practice into direct conversation with the Renaissance masterpieces housed within the Accademia, creating a striking dialogue between contemporary endurance-based art and centuries of Italian painting. Rather than isolating her work from the museum’s historic context, the exhibition deliberately stages moments of confrontation and resonance between past and present, spirituality and corporeality, ritual and representation.
Curated by Shai Baitel, the exhibition spans some of Abramović’s most influential works, revisiting themes that have defined her practice for decades: physical endurance, vulnerability, transformation, grief, and the transmission of energy between bodies. One of the exhibition’s most powerful juxtapositions centers on Pietà (with Ulay) from 1983, positioned in relation to Titian’s iconic religious imagery. The pairing collapses centuries into a single emotional space, linking Renaissance depictions of suffering and transcendence with Abramović’s own performative exploration of intimacy and loss.
Elsewhere, the exhibition invites direct audience participation through Abramović’s Transitory Objects series, sculptural installations composed of stones and crystals designed to be physically activated by visitors. Beds, platforms, and standing structures encourage moments of stillness and bodily awareness, reflecting the artist’s longstanding interest in ritual, meditation, and altered states of perception. In these works, the audience becomes more than observer; participation itself becomes part of the artwork’s energetic exchange.
Abramović’s return to Venice carries additional symbolic weight. Nearly five decades earlier, she became the first woman to receive the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for Balkan Baroque, a visceral performance confronting violence, memory, and national trauma. With Transforming Energy, she returns not simply as a celebrated artist, but as a figure whose influence has fundamentally altered how performance art is understood within contemporary culture.
On view through October 19, the exhibition offers an expansive encounter with an artist who continues to challenge institutions, audiences, and the very definition of artistic experience, even after decades at the center of the contemporary art world.
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Photos by Yu Jieyu
