MIAMI, FL.- Pioneering performance artist, Marina Abramovic will speak on Friday, March 30th as part of the esteemed Steven & Dorothea Green Critics’ Lecture Series at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum. Ms. Abramovic will be discussing her most recent performance, Seven Easy Pieces, presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in which she re-enacted several performances by her peers dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s. The lecture will take place on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 8:00 p.m. in the Green Library room GL 100 on the University Park Campus of Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street , Miami , FL. The lecture will be preceded by the opening of the MFA exhibition at the Frost Art Museum at 7pm. Both events are free & open to the public.

Marina Abramovic has used her body as a means of artistic expression over the past 30 years. Her performances act as experiments that investigate her physical and mental potential and her relationship with the public. Ms. Abramovic pushes her personal boundaries, inducing pain, fatigue, discomfort and risk in a journey of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual transformation. Her most recent work, Seven Easy Pieces (2005), which she presented at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, is the focus of this lecture. In this work, Abramovic reenacted performances from the 1960’s and 70’s. The Guggenheim’s narrative explained “The project [Seven Easy Pieces] is premised on the fact that little documentation exists for most performances from this critical early period; one often has to rely upon testimonies from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given piece. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibility of redoing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.”

Born in Belgrade , Ms. Abramovic began her performance art as an expression of her experience under the Iron Curtain that defined Yugoslavia during her childhood. Performance represented a ritualistic symbol of freedom that has continued throughout her life. Early in her career Ms. Abramovic worked in collaboration with her partner, Ulay. The two created electrifying performance art that caused controversy and drew international attention. Their work together often addressed issues of power and dependency within their own relationship as a couple, as well as their relationship with the audience. These topics dominated such rousing works as Breathing In/Breathing Out (1977), in which Abramovic and Ulay breathed only from each other’s lungs; mouths clamped together and microphones attached to their throats, they continued – almost to the point of suffocation – until they were exchanging only carbon dioxide. After working with Ulay, Ms. Abramovic continued to produce major works on her own including solo exhibitions at such prestigious institutions as the Museum of Modern Art , Oxford and the Musée national d’art moderne, Paris . Her work has been included in the Venice Biennale, and she has received the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist, the New York Dance and Performance Award for The House with the Ocean View and an honorary doctorate degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. She is recognized as one of the most internationally successful performance artists and most active of her generation.

The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University is an AAM accredited university museum and Smithsonian affiliate. All museum events are free and open to the public. The Frost Art Museum is located in PC110 in the Charles Perry building, SW 107th Ave and 8th St at the Florida International University , University Park campus. For more information please visit www.frostartmuseum.org or call 305-348-2890. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Fri; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Wed; noon to 4 p.m. on Sat and Sun.