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Retrospective exhibition by Marina Abramovic at Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade

Belgrade, 2 January 2018

The Museum of Contemporary Art, with the support of the Serbian government, the Ministry of Culture and the Media and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic herself reached an agreement with artist Marina Abramovic to organise a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art at Usce, Belgrade.

The exhibition of this renowned artist will open in September 2019 and will last until January 2020, which is, in a way, a return of Marina Abramovic to Serbia, where she last exhibited independently in 1975.

Negotiations with Marina Abramovic began a few months ago, and were concluded during the visit of the Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić to the Kingdom of Norway in November 2017.

Prime Minister Brnabic and Acting Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Slobodan Nakarada, who was a member of the negotiation team of the Prime Minister, attended the opening of the exhibition The Cleaner by Marina Abramovic, at the Henie Onstad Art Centre near Oslo.

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has personally invited Marina Abramovic to exhibit in Serbia again, after many years, so that our domestic audience is given the opportunity to get to know her work.

As a result of the negotiations, the retrospective exhibition The Cleaner, which will be installed in only seven cities in Europe, after Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Bonn, Florence and the Polish city of Torun, will arrive at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade as well. The exhibition will include drawings, paintings and installations created throughout the entire career of Marina Abramović, including the period when she was creating in Belgrade during the 1970s.

Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has emphasised that the exhibition of Marina Abramovic at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade is yet another confirmation of the new approach to the culture policy we nourish.

Culture is one of the pillars of the development of a successful society, development of creative thinking, respect and understanding of diversity and the government of Serbia will continue to pay special attention to it, Brnabic said.

In addition to this, the Prime Minister has underlined that the organization of Marina Abramovic’s exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art is a message to young artists who can count on cultural institutions in our country, and not abroad solely. ‘This is an indicator for our artists that the state is determined to cultivate art and culture and recognise and support the quality of the contemporary art, Brnabic concluded.

“The Cleaner” is a project of international significance, which will symbolically mark the return of the Museum of Contemporary Art to the world art scene, the Museum’s Acting Director Slobodan Nakarada underlined. Nakarada assessed that Serbia had not seen a similar project organised for a while and that the agreement with one of the world’s greatest contemporary artists is both a huge challenge and a great honour for the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The memoirs of Marina Abramovic ‘Walk Through Wall’ in Serbian were published by Samizdat in September 2017, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Belgrade Philharmonics.