72 MARINA ABRAMOVI MY COCOON
«We’re so obsessed with sitting staring at a computer screen or tweeting, or entertaining one another on Facebook, that we don’t realise how much more interesting and enlightening it can be, and how much more aware it can make us of the meaning of our existence, to just sit looking at the ocean or put a chair in front of a window». Marina Abramovic´ said that in a television interview and then posted it on Facebook. She got 45,000 likes, all at the same time. That’s what happens when you’re a celebrity: the most famous and controversial artist on the international scene. Abramovic´ was born in Belgrade in Serbia and is now 69 and even though her life consists of a series of exhibitions, lectures, and meetings in every corner of the world, she never forgets to get back in contact with nature, whenever she can, at the Star House, her second home in upstate New York. Her main home on Manhattan is 250 square metres in SoHo but is ‘eternally temporary’ as she described it in an interview a few years ago, when she was complaining about never being able to stay in any one place for as long as she’d like to. Today it’s still the same: she says she still doesn’t spend enough time in either of her two homes. «The work I do means I have to be travelling all the time, but I consider the Star House my personal cocoon», she explains; «that’s where I go when I need to be comfortable, where I have space to get back to the person I really am». It’s at Malden Bridge, surrounded by greenery with a panoramic view of the land all around it. «The house lets the sun move through different parts of it throughout the day», she explains. Abramovic´ bought Malden Bridge a few years ago: «when I heard there was a house on the market in the shape of six-pointed star, I was immediately attracted; the star is a recurring theme in my work. I use it all the time as a way of referring back to my communist background, but also as a symbol of my curiosity about the universe and about what exists in the cosmos». New York architect Dennis Wedlick originally built the Star House for a surgeon and his three children, and used the star shape as a way to organise the spaces so that the future inhabitants would all have access to the same space but would also have equal privacy. The four bedrooms are at the third floor, each occupying a point of the star, with bathrooms in the remaining two points. For the remodelling work,
Dress code: bare feet and comfortable clothes. When this controversial international artist isn’t working, she heads to her distinctive villa in the hamlet of Malden Bridge in upstate New York. «Nothing has ever attracted me as much as a house in the shape of a star», she says. «I take walks, I exercise, I read, and I cook...» and then she falls back into the real world