In 1974, Marina Abramović dared an audience to use chains, lipstick and knives on her body – and their willingness to abuse her revealed frightening truths about misogyny
If you walk into the Royal Academy in London today, you’ll be confronted by a table. Set up like an altar, and draped in a white cloth, it has on it 69 objects. Some are associated with pleasure – a glass, a candle, a rose, a hairbrush, a mirror, a comb, a lipstick. Others administer pain – a gun, a bullet, chains, an axe, a saw, an array of sharp knives.
It’s from Rhythm 0, a performance art piece by Marina Abramović – who has become the first woman to have a solo exhibition in all of the museum’s main galleries (they have been open since 1768). First performed in Naples in 1974, the work saw Abramović declare herself as the object. She then instructed the audience to use the props on her as they wished.
