In 1977, in a gallery in Bologna, the artist Marina Abramović and her lover and collaborator, Ulay, stood naked in a narrow doorway, staring intently at one another, as the public squeezed between them.
Last week Imponderabilia, as the piece is called, was resurrected with 37 “re-performers” for the artist’s blockbuster retrospective at the Royal Academy in London.
Visitors chat in the foyer, debating which way to face when nudging through the two naked bodies; as with the original work, one performer is male, the other female. Will they go through this fleshy doorway at all, or else take an alternative, less naked side door? And what is it like for the performers themselves amid a room of awkward gallery-goers?
When the time comes for me to slip between the disrobed pair, their eyes mutually locked in silent communication, I worry most about treading on toes, and the fact that I have to carry my bag ahead of me. But the sense of interrupting is palpable and tangible, given it is impossible not to brush bodies.
This sense of intrusion is what visitors mention most. Tamara, 44, from Kent, and her friend, Anna, who lives in Oxford, opt for the side route. “Not because of the nakedness – but because we felt uncomfortable taking up their space.”
Sisters Fiona, from London, and Claire, down from Leicestershire, do walk through. “It’s intense, but I found it very moving,” says Fiona. “Although I was very British about it; I kept apologising! But I felt I should challenge myself, even for a few seconds, because she [Abramović] has challenged herself so much.”
PitCa, an artist in his 20s, is impressed with the bravery and stoicism of the performers. For his friend Maor it is a brand new experience. “It is different from paintings, which is what I usually see,” he says, slightly puzzled. But Peter and Janet Gibbons, visiting from Hampshire, are old hands, having participated in Imponderabilia at a previous Abramović show in Copenhagen.
“It’s fine, if a bit intimate,” says Peter. “The funniest thing is watching people pretend to be so nonchalant about it, as though it’s something they do every day.”
Rowena Gander, one of the nude performers in the doorway, is a Liverpool-based performance artist and choreographer. Next year, she will be touring her own show, Barely Visible, but for the next three months, she is performing all three of Abramovic’s live works – Imponderabilia, Luminosity, and Nude with Skeleton – at the Royal Academy. To prepare, Gander and her fellow performers took part in one of the infamous ascetic Abramović Method bootcamps: fasting; no tech, sex or talking; and a lot of endurance exercises. “The hardest was staring at a wall of primary colours for hours,” says Gander.
In a post-#MeToo world of intimacy coordinators, Gander says the staff at the Royal Academy have been steadfast in their safeguarding approach. “We have signals where, if anyone were to touch us inappropriately, they would be frog-marched out of there.”
So far, she says she has learned a lot; about her own limits, about the public. “Some spectators, you can hear their breath because they are nervous; you can see some building up the courage, sometimes they back out at the last minute. There’s always a few people who try to break the gaze, too.”
Gander expected most men to face her, and women to face her partner; but interestingly, it’s been the opposite. One woman dropped something right at the second she was passing through, and had to bend down to retrieve it.
Andreja Kargačin, an “antidisciplinary” artist and member of the Serbian-based Shock Cooperative, performed Imponderabilia in Abramović’s home town of Belgrade in 2019. She tells me she found it more uncomfortable as a viewer. “That puts you in a vulnerable spot, because you feel responsible for the artists: you could hurt them, step on them … when you are performing you are concentrating on the very physical act.”
For some, as well as being intense and moving, it can be a charged, erotic experience. As Gander says: “That might be the first person they’ve touched intimately for a long time.”
Nudity in art is, of course, as old as art itself, from the Venus of Willendorf (circa 35,000 years ago) to Kate Winslet being drawn like a French girl on her sofa. It’s strange then, perhaps, that in 2023, when attitudes towards the body and sex are much more liberal, it still causes such a stir. Then again, Imponderabilia is a piece which throws up many questions, including the issue of consent; and as a society we’ve become much more cognisant of that. One thing is for sure: Abramović has made a career out of examining the human condition and Imponderabilia is surely one of the finest examples.
