Nude with Skeleton

Marina Abramović employs in his work the routine of a peep-show, introducing it in the area of the museum. In this case, it is maybe the silent video even more effective than on-site performances: the context in which they were made serves as a shelter for visual arts, where anything might happen with implications no greater than the primitive praxis of the tabloids in the search for potential scandals. An elderly woman breathing naked under a skeleton is not what we would call a scandal nowadays. Nevertheless, the video can be seen wherever so that the environment is more open and less decisive in relation to the possible expectations. Besides, there is much more voyeurism in the deferred image since the observed one does not know who is observing her, nor when or where. In fact, the strangement focuses on the image due to the lack of sound. Does Marina say anything? How does she breathe? A woman lying under a skeleton means addressing life and death explicitly, as Bruce Nauman used to say. She tackles kind of a sexual and terryfing issue, like in most of her works. It is largely a matter of vanitas, a classic way of understanding this type of images. One among many others.