Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately 50 of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book also discusses a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by Abramovic herself; and re-creations of the artist's works by other performers-the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media and performance art at MoMA, and four distinguished scholars examine Abramovic's ideas of time, duration and the reperformance of performance art as a way to extend it into posterity. The Artist Is Present also includes a CD with audio commentary by the artist that guides the reader through the publication. The artist is present not only in the exhibition but also in the experience of the book.Born in Belgrade just after the end of the Second World War, Marina Abramovic was raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church (her great uncle was a Patriarch and a canonized saint in the Church) and left Yugoslavia in 1976, having already established herself as a performance artist, living in Amsterdam and eventually New York, where she presently lives.

本片跟随记录了素有当代行为艺术祖母之美誉的塞尔维亚行为艺术家玛瑞娜·阿布拉莫维克（玛瑞娜·阿布拉莫维克 Marina Abramovic 饰）于2010年在纽约现代艺术博物馆MoMA举行的大型回顾展Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present的全过程。该次展览中，艺术家曾经最著名的几件行为艺术作品通过受邀的30位年轻当代艺术家重现，而玛瑞娜·阿布拉莫维克本人则在对艺术与人类无限的追逐反思中再次创作了一件惊世骇俗却又动人心扉的行为艺术作品。同时本片还回顾了玛瑞娜·阿布拉莫维克与曾经的灵魂伴侣Ulay之间的爱恨情仇。而Ulay与玛瑞娜在表演现场的和解也让所有人为之动容。
本片获得2012年圣丹斯电影节、2013年美国独立精神奖等多项提名，并夺得2012年柏林国际电影节大奖。