Marina Abramović's video installation "7 Deaths of Maria Callas" is a profound reflection on the theme of love

Marina Abramović Seven Deaths, 2021 © Marina Abramović Courtesy Lisson Gallery and The Marina Abramović Archives. Photography by Todd-White Art Photography

By MANUELA ANNAMARIA ACCINNO October 15, 2024

‘The one obsession that everyone wants: love. What do people believe, that it is enough to fall in love to feel complete? The platonic union of souls? I think differently. I believe that you are complete before you begin. And love breaks you. You are whole, and then you break in two.’

-- Philip Roth

The idealism on which we have built our love expectations is rooted in a narrative that celebrates love as the answer to all our dissatisfactions. It preaches the union of souls, the merging of destinies, the fulfilment of a Platonic idea of completeness. Yet, Roth reminds us that this vision of love is often illusory. The truth is that love does not make us whole, but exposes us to a profound revelation of ourselves and each other. When two people come together, they do not create a new harmonious entity, but reveal their fragility, their conflicts, their anxieties. This desecration of the Platonic concept of love, in which two beings merge into one soul, forces us to reconsider the idea of wholeness. Roth argues that true wholeness is a fundamental prerequisite of the individual, who does not need the other to affirm his existence. From this perspective, love is not the culmination of a path of self-discovery, but an experience that, instead of recomposing us, can lead us to confront our fragilities. This invites reflection on how falling in love can act as a catalyst for insecurities, desires and fears, rather than as a simple source of happiness. When Roth states that ‘love breaks you’, he highlights an uncomfortable truth: openness to the other requires a renunciation, an act of vulnerability that can lead to disillusionment. Love can be likened to walking on uncertain ground, where the expectation of a harmonious fusion collides with the reality of conflict and diversity. The rifts that emerge in a love relationship can reveal our most hidden cracks, making clear the price to be paid for emotional connection.

Marina Abramović Seven Deaths, 2021, film installation © Marina Abramović. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery and The Marina Abramović Archives

The video installation ‘7 Deaths of Maria Callas’ by Marina Abramović, is a profound and penetrating reflection on the theme of love, intersecting the inevitability of death with the fragility of human bonds. The entire work is structured around the interpretation of seven operas, each of which ends with the death of the protagonist, reflecting on a cycle of life and vulnerability inseparable from the experience of love. The choice of operas - Carmen, Tosca, Lucia di Lammermoor, Otello, Norma, Madama Butterfly and La Traviata - is not random. Each of these operatic narratives tells stories of passion and sacrifice, highlighting the conflicting and tragic nature of love.

The protagonists, at the climax of their lives, experience a love that not only exalts them, but also leads them inevitably towards death. The physical presence of the artist, who dies seven times and materializes death in her every gesture and glance, amplifies the message of the work. Abramović becomes the embodiment of female vulnerability, capable of exploring the abysses of pain and desolation in conjunction with the power of music. Her work opposes, in a way, Roth's conception of love: while Roth speaks of an individual already ‘whole’, capable of facing love without losing herself, Abramovic suggests that the act of loving is, on the contrary, an opening to the risk of rupture. This dialectic is composed in a process of identity deconstruction, where the possibility of being ‘whole’ before meeting the other is undermined by shared experiences and intimacy. The figure of Willem Dafoe, who appears alongside Abramović, further enriches this narrative. He is not only the symbol of male love, but also represents the oppressive and sometimes deadly dynamics of relationships, where the male, consciously or unconsciously, becomes the bearer of an inescapable fate for his female companions. The addition of an eighth death, that of Callas herself, resonates like a sinister and powerful echo. It not only celebrates the greatness of her art, but also marks a tragic and inevitable conclusion, where the love of music, performance, and life itself, culminates in an awareness of mortality.

Abramovic's work thus becomes a journey through the multiple layers of the human experience, a meditation on love as a vital and destructive force that, in its assiduous becoming, reveals the profound truth of the human being: none of us is completely ready to love, and in the end, the encounter with the other is a continuous unveiling, an opening from which we cannot escape, but which can also lead to the end.

I had the chance to see this work in Bergamo, in the new exhibition Centre, gres art 671, dedicated to arts and culture, as part of the exhibition: between breath and fire, which can be visited until 16 February 2025, this is the title of the project, investigating some key themes that have marked the artist's 50-year career: breath, the body, the relationship with the other and death. 30 recent and historical works, presented between indoor and outdoor, involve in an osmotic relationship the exhibition space and, for the first time, also the garden with the Tree soundscape, in which the diffusion among the trees of a birdsong blurs the boundaries between natural and artificial, reality and fiction, mortality and transcendence. A complete and complex path, which has at its Centre the film installation Seven Deaths dedicated by Marina Abramović to Maria Callas. WM