Marina Abramović Books: Five Essential Titles Chosen by Shai Baitel
What does it take to understand an artist who has made endurance itself part of her medium? For curator Shai Baitel, the answer begins with five books on Marina Abramović, the Serbian performance artist (b. 1946) whose career has stretched across more than five decades and whose work continues to command major museum attention.
Baitel, who curated Abramović’s exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, selected titles that move between memoir, biography, collected quotations, and scholarship. The list includes Walk Through Walls: A Memoir (2016), in which Abramović revisits formative moments from her life; Marina Abramović: A Visual Biography (2023), shaped through a 17-month interview process with writer Katya Tylevich; and When Marina Abramović Dies: A Biography (2010) by James Westcott, which draws on interviews and access to the artist’s archive.
Also on the list is Abramović-isms (2024), edited by Larry Warsh, a compact collection of the artist’s aphorisms, and Marina Abramović (2023), the catalogue that accompanied her solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. That volume brings together essays by Karen Archey, Adrian Heathfield, Svetlana Racanović, Andrea Tarsia, and Devin Zuber, and Baitel describes it as a particularly valuable guide to Abramović’s oeuvre.
The catalogue’s breadth matters because Abramović’s practice has often been discussed through singular gestures — the body under strain, the long duration, the charged encounter with the viewer. Yet the books Baitel chose suggest a fuller picture: a career shaped not only by spectacle, but by language, memory, and the slow accumulation of critical context.
The timing is notable as Abramović approaches her 80th birthday later this year and maintains a busy exhibition schedule. Her current projects include Seven Deaths at Cisternerne in Copenhagen and Transforming Energy at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, underscoring how firmly she remains at the center of contemporary performance art.
