The famous artist in her own words and at her most revealing: a glimpse into Abramović’s inner world with personal stories and insightful musings paired with original drawings made especially for the book.

Although long esteemed within the art world, Abramović became a global cultural figure after her groundbreaking 2010 MoMA retrospective, The Artist Is Present. This volume, timed to celebrate her eightieth birthday in 2026—which will be marked by major events, including a large-scale project at the Park Avenue Armory—offers a fresh, personal encounter with the artist. Rather than a traditional monograph, it serves as a poetic map of her extraordinary life, tracing her mystical, daring, and often humorous journey through stories of love (with an entire section devoted to “love spells” and her dreams), sex, loss, fear, nature, ancestry, and creativity.  
The volume is part sketchbook, part diary, part personal philosophy. Abramović’s voice remains direct and unfiltered, reflecting the spirit that has defined her five-decade career. Her reflections reveal the emotional and psychological terrain behind the boundary-pushing works that have reshaped the possibilities of art.

About The Author

Marina Abramović is a Serbia-born conceptual and performance artist whose work examines the body, endurance, the relationship between performer and audience, and the transformative potential of the mind. Often described as the “grandmother of performance art,” she has been active for more than forty years. In 2007, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a nonprofit foundation dedicated to the study and preservation of long-duration performance.