01 Works, RELIGIOUS ART - CONTEMPORARY & 20th Century Interpretation of the Bible! With Footnotes - 26

Marina Abramović, Serbian, b. 1946

The Levitation of Saint Therese, 2009

Single flatscreen video installation

Private collection

The Original Flying Nun – St. Teresa of Avila:

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was a Doctor of the Catholic Church. This was no small or insignificant title. A Doctor of the Church is a saint whose writings have been of great advantage to the entire church, no matter which century they are read in. Of thousands of Catholic saints, there are only 33 Doctors of the Church. Teresa’s contribution was her writing and teaching on prayer. She was the founder of the discalced Carmelite nuns.

Teresa’s levitations occurred during times of deep prayer. She regarded her levitations as chastisement from God. When she would feel like God was going to levitate her body, she would lie down on the ground and ask her sister nuns to sit on her and hold her down. She continually begged God to stop causing her to levitate in public. More on St. Teresa of Avila

Marina Abramović, Serbian, b. 1946•  Working in a wide range of media, Marina Abramović is best known for her provocative performance works, employing her own body as both subject and medium. In an early performance entitled Rhythm 10, Abramović repeatedly stabbed the spaces between her fingers with a series of knives, effectively testing the relationship between the mental and physical, and reinterpreting the concept of rhythm. Between 1976 and 1988, Abramović collaborated with German photographer and performance artist Ulay to create performance works that explore such binaries as male and female, active and passive, through the execution of repetitive, exhausting, and often painful actions. Abramović has continued to work independently since then, staging performative works that increasingly demand viewer involvement, such as her MoMA retrospective, “The Artist Is Present,” in which museum visitors could sit down across from Abramović at a table and engage in a silent exchange with the artist. More on Marina Abramović

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