Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic has been criticized for her racist comments comparing Aboriginal people to “dinosaurs” who “look terrible,” after photos surfaced on social media of her Instagram post that has since been deleted.
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“They are the oldest race on the planet. They look like dinosaurs. They are really strange and different, and they should be treated as living treasures,” said Abramovic describing her experience spending time with the Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi nations in Australia.
“To Western eyes they look terrible. Their faces are like no other faces on earth; they have big torsos (just one bad result of their encounter with Western civilization is a high-sugar diet that bloats their bodies) and sticklike legs,” she continued
Abramovic, one of the world’s most renowned performance artists based in New York, apologized on a Facebook post saying that the comments were part of “an early, uncorrected proof of my forthcoming book.”
Abramovic said that it was an initial reflection of her encounters with Aboriginal people in 1979 and that now she has an “understanding and appreciation of Aborigines that I subsequently acquired through immersion in their world and carry in my heart today.”
Publishers have since removed the controversial passage from the final edit of her memoir.
Her recent comments have been deemed extremely racist and inappropriate by the Aboriginal community. Many took to social media with the hashtag #theracistispresent, making reference to Abramovic’s Museum of Modern Art exhibition called “The Artist is Present.”
Her memoir, “Walk Through Walls,” is due to be released later this year by Penguin Books.