As artist Marina Abramović unveils her longevity-focused health and wellness brand, she talks to Funmi Fetto about the triumphant battle with Lyme disease that inspired it.
A smiling Marina Abramović – wearing an all-black Yohji Yamamoto ensemble – greets me outside the modernist West London house she is staying in and warmly ushers me in from the cold. Within minutes, at her behest, my nose was nuzzling the crook of her neck. (We had been discussing fan behaviour and I mentioned someone I met who was curious to know “what Marina Abramović smelled like”. Abramović was game.) “It’s Comme des Garçons Wonderwood. I’ve been wearing this for years.”
Her voice is thick and husky, her Eastern European accent, despite living in New York for 35 years, unwavering. I tell her that everyone who knew I was meeting her was incredibly excited. “They must be very young,” she deadpans. It turns out Abramović, the 77-year-old performance art powerhouse famed for pushing the boundaries of mental and physical endurance, is a hoot.
It is in stark contrast to the Marina Abramović presented at the recent Royal Academy retrospective of the artist’s career, which spans over half a century. At the show, the air was intense, visitors spoke in hushed tones – if at all – and every live or static image of Abramović was deathly inert and expressionless. In the exhibition – the first retrospective of a female artist in the institution’s history – you also saw a replica of “Rhythm 0”, her seminal 1974 performance, where she invited visitors to take any objects from a table laden with paraphernalia (including chains, whips, an apple, knives, feathers, a saw, a loaded gun), and to use them on her as they wished. (One man infamously held the gun to Abramović’s neck.) There’s a live performance of a naked woman lying beneath a human skeleton (this was in ode to Abramović’s 2002 “Nude with Skeleton” performance), and also “Balkan Baroque”, her Venice Biennale performance in which she reflects on her Yugoslavian heritage, recounts a gruesome folk story and attempts to wash clean a mammoth heap of bloodied bones.
The experience is unsettling, terrifying but also mind blowing. But this is what the art world has come to expect from Abramović. Every so often, however, she throws us a curveball. The latest? Launching Marina Abramović Longevity Method: a health and wellness product line.
Of course, the news that (yet) another famous face has dropped a beauty or wellness brand runs the risk of cynicism. Abramović is unbothered, batting away any potential cries of her “selling out” with an easy confidence. “I don’t lie, I don’t compromise, what you see is what you get and what you get is pure truth. This is ‘credibility’.”
The initial line up is a tight-knit edit. It includes a cleanser/exfoliator/moisturiser hybrid (ingredients include white bread and white wine to replenish essential nutrients in the skin, as well as vitamin C and hyaluronic acid to brighten and deeply hydrate), and three wellbeing drops. Anti-allergy is formulated with shilajit, a mineral found in the Himalayas and used in Ayurvedic medicine to soothe allergic reactions. Immunity includes chilli peppers to boost metabolism and fresh garlic to enhance the ability to fight infections. Energy is chock full of antioxidants, such as succinic acid and cranberry juice, to support cellular energy production and combat oxidative stress.
Marina Abramović Longevity Method Anti-Allergy Drops
£99
The Abramović Method
Marina Abramović Longevity Method Face Lotion
£199
The Abramović Method
Marina Abramović Longevity Method Immune Drops
£99
The Abramović Method
Marina Abramović Longevity Method Energy Drops
£99
The Abramović Method
The product line was conceived with Dr Nonna Brenner, the renowned doctor and founder of the eponymous wellness “longevity” centre in Fuschl am See, Austria. Sitting side by side at the kitchen table, Abramović unequivocally credits the doctor, now a close friend, with her endurance. (“I am a workaholic – I work like hell – and if I didn’t have Nonna to balance my energy, believe me, I could not do what I’m doing.”) It is also the reason for her youthfulness, but: “I never drink, smoke or take drugs, I sleep eight hours a day,” she says. “And,” she deadpans, “I have a lover who is 21 years younger.” (This is actually true.)
The 2017 meeting between the artist and the doctor was serendipitous: Abramović had a project in mind with the esteemed (and at the time elusive) Teodor Currentzis, the conductor described by the New York Times as the “rebel maestro” of classical music. She tracked him down to Brenner’s centre, which is 25 minutes from Salzburg. Intrigued by Brenner (“I’m Slavic, she’s Slavic. There was a connection!”), she forgot about Currentzis and stayed long after the conductor left. She saw something – beyond the fact that “I was like, oh my God, Nonna looks like Marina Tsvetaeva, one of my favourite writers!” – that made her believe there might just be a cure for Lyme disease, something Abramović had battled with for years.
“Some people apparently can end up with four diseases in one Lyme. I was one of the lucky ones. I’m so special I had all four of the shitty diseases,” she says. Blaming its exacerbation on “years of antibiotics which totally ruined my system”, she described the debilitating effects of the condition. “You wake up in the morning and you have to decide whether you’re going to brush your teeth or comb your hair. I was always very, very tired. I had no energy, I suffered from panic attacks… It was really, really bad.” Brenner treated her over a period of months, and “now, my Lyme disease has totally gone”, the artist says, slapping her palm on the table for emphasis.
The Austrian doctor attributes her own success with clients to combining scientific methods with traditional medicine she learnt from a Tibetan doctor – including reading pulses. “I never start work on any client without an in-depth pulse diagnosis. After that I take them off the antibiotics and we begin the treatment.” Still, she baulks at the idea that her Longevity Centre might be referred to as a medi-spa or clinic. “It is very personal, I have only three, maybe four people who stay at any one time for at least 14 or 21 days, I cook all the food myself, we all eat together… It’s very personal, I want people to feel like they are in a home, not a hospital.” Here Abramović interjects with a snort: “Yes, I’ve been to those unbelievably expensive medical clinics. They fed me just yoghurt and dry bread and by the end of the week all they could tell me was that I was allergic to cow’s milk.” She cackles at the absurdity of it: “So much wasted money…”
The discreet Brenner won’t be drawn on the cost of treatment at her centre (a robust five figure sum for a 14-day stay is the industry norm), and also gently dismisses the idea that her clientele (rumoured to include world leaders and Hollywood elites) are all high-powered. “It’s different, a mix.” Abramović chuckles, murmuring: “Ah, no, not a mix, it is a pretty good list…”
Undeniably, this is an exclusive experience most people won’t ever be privy to, and both Dr Brenner and Abramović recognise this. Hence the product range. “These formulas are included in what I have been using to treat my clients for years, but we want to help everyone to be healthy and everyone to have longevity,” says Dr Brenner. “Yes,” Abramović says with a smile. “Nonna is determined for me to live 110 years. Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O’Keeffe… they didn’t manage 100. Female artists only get really taken seriously after 100 so if I make it, maybe they will finally take me seriously.”
Societal ideas around older women is a hot button topic for Abramović (“This idea that the sex life stops with the menopause. Excuse me?! This is when it just gets started!”), and she is emphatic that we should all embrace ageing. “Being old, especially in America where I live, is still seen as something dirty, that you have to stay ‘ever young’ using every possible type of surgery with these monstrous results. You look at fashion magazine covers where no one is real, because the PhotoShop is so extreme, and then you see the person in real life and you think, ‘What on earth happened there?’ We shouldn’t have to look like Barbies to please society. We have to accept the beauty of old age.”
That’s not to say she eschews all forms of celebrating the aesthetic. She makes no secret of her love of fashion – “I get all these incredible opportunities to be photographed in fashion magazines. Yes, I do my hardcore art, but I enjoy this stuff.” She also loves dyeing her hair. “My mother stopped painting her greys when she was 60. I remember looking at her and thinking, no way am I doing that!” Still, she is adamant that the world needs to develop a sense of fearlessness around ageing and rather, simply focus on good health. “Because the moment your health sucks is when age becomes a terrible burden. When you embrace age and stay healthy, everything is possible. We want to help that process.”
Before I leave, she pours each of us a fresh glass of water and adds some Immune drops. She wrinkles her nose, “You can really smell the garlic no?” We drink it anyway. “Where are you going after this?” she asks, with her gravelly chuckle. “Just make sure you don’t kiss anybody.”