Back in 1977, Marina Abramović stood opposite her partner and fellow performer Ulay, both fully naked, in the narrow entrance to a gallery in Bologna, Italy. It marked the first staging of Imponderabilia, an artwork that forced visitors to squeeze through the pair (and decide which of them to face) in order to enter the exhibition space, raising questions about voyeurism, taboos surrounding the human body, and viewer participation in art. In the end, it was cut short by police, on grounds of obscenity. Today, though, Imponderabilia is causing controversy for a different reason.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday (January 22) in New York State court, artist John Bonafede has accused the Museum of Modern Art of failing to protect performers during a 2010 restaging of the seminal artwork, which ran as part of an exhibition titled Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. Appearing as one of the nude artists, Bonefede was instructed to stand 18 inches from a fellow performer and allow visitors to squeeze by for 75 minutes at a time. During his stints, he alleges that he was assaulted on seven occasions by older male attendees.

Bonafede describes the encounters as “eerily similar” in how they played out, with the men turning to face him before lowering their hand to “fondle and/or grope” his genitals. They would linger a moment, he adds, before moving through to the next room in the gallery. 

The lawsuit claims that MoMA failed to take “reasonable corrective action” despite knowing that such groping was a “pervasive problem” at the show, with no verbal or written warnings in place to tell visitors not to touch the artists. Bonfede does say that several alleged assaulters were removed after he alerted security about the unwanted touching, but adds that the first time it happened he stayed silent due to a “tough it out” culture perpetuated by organisers.

The lawsuit is filed more than a decade after the exhibition ran, under an extension of the New York Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on sexual assault cases. Bonafede seeks unspecified damages and a jury trial. The cultural context, though, raises some difficult questions about performance art and consent. 

Over the last several decades, Marina Abramović has pushed boundaries related to interactions between the artist and viewer. This has often included ceding authority over her own body, most famously in Rhythm 0 (1974), a six-hour performance that saw her stand still and invite the audience to do whatever they wanted to her, using a selection of objects including a rose, a feather, honey, scissors, wine, nails, a gun, and a bullet. As noted by art critics at the time, interactions included intentional violence and minor incidents of sexual assault.

“I felt really violated,” Abramović said of Rhythm 0, years later. However, this violation – and the artist’s willingness to put herself in a position of extreme vulnerability – is part of what makes the artwork such a powerful comment on human psychology to this day. When the performance ended six hours later and Abramović walked toward the audience, she recalls: “Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”

The artist/observer dynamics become even murkier in more recent exhibitions, staged everywhere from MoMA to the Royal Academy, where younger performers are hired to take the place of Abramović (now 77). Without unpicking their contracts, it’s not entirely clear what these performers have agreed to endure by taking part in the shows, or who holds responsibility for visitors’ inappropriate behaviour.

As Abramović herself has pointed out, culture has also changed significantly since Imponderabilia’s debut. At the time of the MoMA exhibition, she explained: “[It’s] really important how that one piece which was made in ‘77 can function in 2010, and what kind of reaction and response the public will have. We will know only this at the end of the show.”

In his fresh lawsuit against MoMA, Bonafede says that he has endured “years of emotional distress” as a result of the alleged assaults that took place during The Artist Is Present, citing damage to his “mental health, body image, and career”. He has previously discussed working with Abramović for the MoMA retrospective in a 2015 interview, saying that it “definitely inspired” him in some ways: “Mostly about how to handle public nudity in my performance, personal space violations and group negotiations for fair treatment for performance artists from institutions.”