Walk Through Walls

In 2010, more than 750,000 people queued at Marina Abramović’s landmark MoMA retrospective, waiting for the chance to sit silently across from her in The Artist Is Present—an unprecedented durational performance that unfolded over 700 hours. This historic event, celebrating nearly five decades of radical performance work, reaffirmed Abramović’s status as a singular, unstoppable force in contemporary art.

At the emotional core of Walk Through Walls lies a sweeping, operatic love story: a twelve-year collaboration and romantic partnership with fellow performance artist Ulay. Together, they lived on the road in a van, broke and devoted to their art, until their bond dissolved in dramatic fashion atop the Great Wall of China.

By turns raw, epic, and unexpectedly funny, Abramović’s memoir chronicles an unmatched career built on pushing the boundaries of endurance—physical, emotional, and spiritual.