‘SNAKE-OIL’ ARTIST
Onetime MoMA enigma now selling $125 ‘cure’
Edgy performance artist Marina Abramovic has become a “wellness” entrepreneur, selling $125 “immunity drops” made with raw garlic chili peppers and a $250 “cleanser” that includes white bread — after her Abramovic Institute plan collapsed.
Abramovic became world famous for staring down people in a blockbuster 2010 MoMA show, “The Artist is Present.” Later she had an exhibit where museum visitors squeezed between two completely naked models.
She was also the focus of false QAnon conspiracy theories that she was part of a ring of satanic cannibal pedophiles who fed on children, which grew out of Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails, including one from Abramovic inviting the candidate’s campaign manager John Podesta to a “spirit cooking” dinner hosted by the artist.
But her grand plans for an arts center bearing her name in the Hudson Valley have fizzled and her foundation took in just $7 in 2022, The Post has learned.
Instead she has launched a range of “longevity” products, which are not FDA-approved, with the aid of an alternative-health guru who advocates leeches as a therapy and a recipe credited to a Tibetan monk.
They “provide a pathway to optimal health and longevity,” Abramovic claims on her e-commerce site.
Her latest venture, the Abramovic Longevity Method, is a pricey skin care and wellness line featuring face lotion, “anti-allergy,” “energy” and “immunity” drops retailing for as much as $580.
On a newly launched Britishbased website, she said she “developed the Abramovic Method to help me and others recenter themselves and focus on what is most important — to live in the present, long and healthily.”
‘I don’t compromise’
Abramovic told British Vogue this week she was not selling out, and wanted to share the secrets of her looks, saying: “I don’t lie, I don’t compromise, what you see is what you get and what you get is pure truth. This is ‘credibility.’ ”
Abramovic has gone into business with Nonna Brenner, who runs the Centre of Health & Prophylaxis, an alternative medicine retreat on a lake near Salzburg, Austria.
Brenner says she uses Tibetan medicine, herbs and other holistic approaches — including leeches — to help highend clients who have included Donna Karan recharge and adopt healthier lifestyles.
In a video posted to the center’s website, Abramovic claims that Brenner helped cure her Lyme disease and high blood pressure using leeches and garlic drops, among other ancient healing techniques, when she first went to see her in 2017. She returns twice a year.
The health products the busiBrenner ness partners are pushing use ingredients including white bread and white wine in a $225 cleanser/ exfoliator, while the $125 “immunity drops” are made from fresh lemon, raw garlic and flower pollen. “Anti-allergy” drops, also $125, use licorice root. The full range of drops and lotion are available in a $580 box.
Monk-y business
describes herself as a Kazakh-born, German-trained docShe tor. told the Financial Times that she got the recipes for the drops and lotions from a Tibetan monk named Dr. Lu Shen. Abramovic, 77, had tried to create a museum in the Hudson Valley, announcing the Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art, in 2007.
It was supposed to be a world center of bold art experiment, based in a 17,000-square-foot property in Hudson, NY, which would “change the local economy” in the town like the Sundance Film Festival transformed Park City, Utah, and the Guggenheim changed Bilbao, Spain.
She raised just $2.2 million despite help from Jay-Z — and refused to give the cash back when she shelved the project.