Abramavić is fearless. She told a packed lecture hall at the Royal Academy that, right at the start of her career as an artist, she decided to make her body her medium. She wanted to explore the human condition and challenge herself to experience extremes and represent emotions and experience.

Above is a still from Imponderabilia. With Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943-2020) who is known as Ulay. They presented themselves as a ‘living door’. This was reproduced at the Royal Academy with two models who stood sentry in the same way while people squeezed between the two naked bodies.

I do a lot of life drawing and contact with the model’s naked body is not something anyone would ever contemplate in a class. She invites the audience to have an uneasy ‘close encounter’ with another person’s nakedness and it is unsettling for clothed viewers.

Another artwork which was reproduced for this exhibition was the performance in a box with a skeleton. A live model was placed above the video of Marina, also nude beneath a skeleton, and it’s a very beguiling sight. Marina told us that she had been fascinated and exercised by thoughts of mortality and death. Life imitated art for her when, earlier this year, she became dangerously ill with a pulmonary embolism and very nearly died. Now, she told us at the press conference, she has changed her view on life. She’s now so pleased to have survived that she has stopped feeling fearful and wants to embrace the pleasures of life and enjoy everything.

Much of her performance art has been recorded on video. She has trained herself to be able to sit or stand for long periods. She can deny herself food or the company of other people. This is all part of her exploration of pain and what it can do to a body, and a mind.

Marina has recruited a group of artists who are prepared to recreate some of her works. They spend time training themselves to endure pain, discomfort, exposure and denial in order to re-perform the pieces as authentically as possible.

This is quite a hard show to describe. It’s very immersive, an assault on the senses and presents uncomfortable situations which can make you wince. Her partnership with Ulay led to some very interesting collaborations. It’s moving to see the film of them as they each walked 90 days along the Great Wall of China to a central point where, it was planned, they would marry. But, by the time they met, the relationship was over.

The exhibition is on at the Royal Academy in the main galleries until 1 January 2024. Then it will tour other galleries in Europe.