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This past Monday, performance artist Marina Abramovic announced plans to build a $15 million "Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art," in Hudson, New York. The center is slated to open in late 2014 and will function as a 23,000-square-foot school, art center, performance space, and venue for young emerging artists. 

Rendering of the facade of the Marina Abramović Institute

Abramovic, who most recently made headlines with her 2010 performance "The Artist is Present," in which she sat in the MoMA atrium for over 700 hours, bespeaks the common theme of duration—as well as endurance, pain, control, and giving the viewer power—in her work.

Abramovic also explores the modern individual as a sexual creature in much of her performances- these works survey themes of gender, eroticism, pornography, etc. In her 2005 video installation "Balkan Erotic Epic," men and women perform "ancient homosocial rituals." Women run around and catch the "falling semen of their fertility god" (quote from Huffington Post.) This particular work was inspired by views of sexuality in Balkan Pagan traditions. 

Ambramovic is also featured in this season's Art21; here's a clip of her on her relationship to fashion and femininity: