Marina Abramović’s Long Life, Short Stories turns a long life into memories, dreams and lines
The 224-page hardcover, published October 6, pairs personal recollections with original drawings. Rizzoli’s October 29 New York event is ticketed; signed copies carry pre-signed bookplates.
Marina Abramović’s art often places the body and time before an audience. Her new book, Long Life, Short Stories, lets the reader control the pace instead. Published by Rizzoli Electa on October 6, 2026, the 224-page hardcover brings personal stories and reflections together with drawings created specifically for the volume, as part of the celebrations surrounding her 80th birthday in 2026. It is priced at US$65 or C$85. This is a recent art-book release already on sale, rather than an October 25 debut.
Memories connect without becoming a timeline
The book’s starting point is not a chronological inventory of performances. Love, loss, fear, nature, ancestry and creativity instead offer routes into the artist’s inner experience. The publisher places it somewhere between a sketchbook, diary and personal philosophy; dreams and love also have dedicated space. Decades of artistic activity are broken into shorter narrative units, allowing a reader to begin with a memory without first knowing the dates of every major work.
Born in Serbia, Abramović has long explored the body, endurance and the relationship between performer and audience. The Artist Is Present at New York’s MoMA in 2010 marked an important point in her recognition beyond specialist art circles. This book offers a different kind of proximity: performance asks bodies to share a moment, while a book lets readers pause, turn back or leave temporarily. Those are distinct experiences of time, and a reason to approach an artist’s book on its own terms.
Images have a role beyond illustrating words
The publisher’s public preview alternates drawings, photographs and text. One drawing overlaps a hand, foot and red outline; another places a face inside multiple circling lines. Rather than depicting an entire event realistically, these images let fragments of the body, memory and imagination occupy the same sheet. Intersections and blank space offer a useful starting point, without rushing to assign a single meaning to every contour.
A public-preview drawing overlaps a hand, foot and contours in black and red.A face is surrounded by repeated circling lines in a public-preview drawing.
A photograph of a worn, overlaid book-page object also brings the condition of paper into the reading experience. Compared with endurance or sustained looking in a performance, time here appears stored in marks on a surface. This is a visual observation of the public sample, not a claim to have read all 224 pages. Nor should the artist’s personal philosophy or accounts of dreams be recast as therapy methods or scientifically validated life advice.
A book-page object in the public preview bears wear and overlaid material.
The October 29 New York event and its signed copies
Rizzoli Bookstore announces an event with Abramović at 1133 Broadway, New York, from 6pm to 7pm local time on October 29, 2026. It is ticketed, with a registration link in the announcement. The shop specifically says books come with pre-signed bookplates, which should not be mistaken for a guarantee that each copy will be signed in person at the event. No conversation partner is named in that announcement, so a guest or host should not be added. Places and admission conditions depend on the current booking page.
The book measures 8.5 by 10.5 inches and carries ISBN 9780847877041. Visit Rizzoli Electa’s book page for the edition and public preview, and Rizzoli’s New York announcement for the event. For readers approaching Abramović beyond her performances, the volume offers intersecting paths through self-narration and images. Its interest lies less in treating every story as an answer than in noticing how selected fragments and pauses allow a long life to emerge between short accounts.
