Participating artists: Marina Abramović, Ileana Arnaoutou, Nika Autor, Aleksandar Battista Ilić in collaboration with Ivana Keser and Tomislav Gotovac, Ursula Burke, Alán Carrasco, Jasmina Cibic, Lana Čmajčanin, Fábio Colaço, Phil Collins, Willie Doherty, Rita Duffy, Amanda Dunsmore, Petros Efstathiadis, Andrea Geyer, Igor Grubić,  Đejmi Hadrović, Petrit Halilaj, Anthony Haughey, Frances Hegarty, Saskia Holmkvist, Sanja Iveković, Sandra Johnston, Dragana Jurišić, Šejla Kamerić, Barbara Knežević, Siniša Labrović, Nicolas Lambouris, Latent Community, Manolis D. Lemos,  Glenn Loughran, Alastair MacLennan, Goshka Macuga, Petra Matić, Emily McFarland, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Petros Moris, Locky Morris, Alban Muja, Mairéad McClean, William McKeown, Vlad Nancă, Eleni Odysseos, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Karol Radziszewski, María Ruido, Edita Schubert, Paul Seawright, Driton Selmani, Indrė Šerpytytė, Slavs and Tatars, Mladen Stilinović, Bojan Stojčić, Anne Tallentrie, Kostis Velonis, Vangelis Vlahos, Cathy Wilkes, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor.

11 – 24 September 2026

Marina Abramović, The Hero, 2001, Single channel video (b/w, sound), 14’21”2001, © Marina Abramović 
Courtesy of the Marina Abramovic Archives and LI-MA

About the film
Abramović dedicated ‘The Hero’ to her father, who was a soldier in World War II. Her mother was helping wounded soldiers at the front line, but at a certain moment got typhus in the middle of a battle. As the story goes, she was lying unconscious in the snow among the wounded soldiers, while Abramović’s father was fighting the enemy with his division, retreating towards the forest where the mother was lying. Passing her on a white horse, the father saw her hair protrude from the top of the blanket. Abramović’s mother had beautiful hair, so he stopped, dismounted his horse, and lifted the blanket. When he saw her, he immediately and without any words carried her away on his horse to unoccupied territory and left her in a village with a peasant family.

Through the fog of the fever she saw his face. She stayed with the peasant family for one month while she was recovering and then she went back to the front line. One year later the wounded soldiers were coming into the improvised hospital where Abramović’s mother was working. She recognized among them, bleeding heavily on a stretcher, Abramović’s father. She found out that he was the same blood group as her, gave her blood for a transfusion and saved his life. Marina Abramović was born one year later. She said about the performance: ‘After my father’s death I decided to make this work. I am sitting motionless on the white horse with a white flag blowing in the wind. I stay there for an indefinite time. The female voice is singing, from her memory, the Yugoslavian national anthem from the time of Tito. The video image is black and white because I wanted to emphasize the past and memory.’

For further details of the Living Canvas at IMMA Outdoor Screening Programme click here.