1Unknown, Woman - Anna Odell
In 2011, Swedish artist Anna Odell staged a fake suicide attempt in Stockholm as a part of her performance art piece called "Unknown, Woman 2009-349701." It sparked a massive police response.
2. Swiss artist Milo Moiré's "Mirror Box" performance art piece from 2016 involved her standing in a box made of mirrors, allowing strangers to touch her breasts and genitals for 30 seconds at a time.
3. In 1993, artist Ron Athey's performance art piece "Four Scenes in a Harsh Life" at the Walker Art Center featured body modifications and suspensions while covered in blood, leading to protests from conservative groups.
4. In 1999, British artist Mark McGowan protested the high cost of living in London by pushing a peanut across the city with his nose.
5. In 1983, artist Christo's "Surrounded Islands" used pink fabric to surround 11 uninhabited islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay, creating an otherworldly, surreal, and dreamlike landscape.
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6Zhu Yu
In 2000, Chinese artist Zhu Yu's controversial art performance "Eating People" involved him appearing to cook and eat a stillborn fetus, sparking controversy and outrage.
7. In 2017, French artist Abraham Poincheval lived inside a giant rock for a week, eating and sleeping inside the rock, and documenting the experience for his performance art piece "Stone".
8. In 2010, Italian artist Pippa Bacca was hitchhiking from Italy to the Middle East as part of a performance art piece called "Brides on Tour." She was raped and murdered in Turkey by a man who had offered her a ride.
9. The Australian artist Stelarc has performed extreme body modification performance art acts, including suspending himself from hooks in his skin and implanting a third ear on his arm.
10. Yoko Ono's 1965 performance art piece "Cut Piece" involved her sitting on a stage and inviting audience members to come up and cut off pieces of her clothing until she was almost naked.
11Spencer Tuick
Spencer Tunick's "Naked" involved getting thousands of people to pose naked in public spaces for his performance art.
12. Piero Manzoni's controversial artwork, "Artist's Shit," consisted of 90 tin cans filled with feces, which he sold for up to €124,000 per tin can. In 2016, one of the tins sold for a new world record of €275,000 at an art auction in Milan.
13. Performance artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay connected their mouths and only breathed each other's exhaled breaths until they collapsed from oxygen deprivation as part of one of their performance art pieces.
14. As part of an art performance, artist Jacqueline Traides willingly underwent public animal testing techniques to highlight the inhumane treatment of animals in cosmetics testing labs.
15. Tilda Swinton's art installation and performance piece, "The Maybe," involved her sleeping in a glass case on public display for a week in both London and Rome.
16Glass Bottle Performance - Russell Brand
Russell Brand's violent outburst, which involved breaking a glass bottle over his head and stabbing himself with the shards, led to his expulsion from his second art school after he was criticized over a performance.
17. Performance artists Teching Hsieh and Linda Montano spent one year tied to each other at the waist with an 8-foot-long rope. They had to stay in the same room while indoors, including at Montano's teaching job, and were not allowed to touch each other until the end of the one-year period.
18. John Jairo Villamil, a young artist student, died from asphyxiation while performing with a plastic bag covering his head. No one helped him because they thought the convulsions and heavy breathing were part of the performance.
19. The Shia LaBeouf memes were part of a performance art piece by Shia LaBeouf and two other artists. This included the "Just Do It" meme, the infamous Paper Bag incident, and an experiment where the three were isolated inside separate cabins with their only means of communication being a video link to a cabin inside Helsinki's Kiasma Museum. Visitors to the museum could speak to the artists via this link, but the trio could only communicate with the visitors by text and not with each other.
20. In 2020, a Berlin-based artist filled a wagon with 99 smartphones, opened Maps navigation on all of them, and slowly pulled the wagon along Berlin streets to trick Google Maps into thinking that an empty street was bursting with traffic.
21Dead Hare Performance - Joseph Beuys
In 1965, Joseph Beuys performed a three-hour art performance piece in which he wandered around the gallery while cradling a dead hare, his face covered in honey, and talked to the animal about his paintings. The public was allowed in after three hours of watching through the windows.
22. Marina Abramovic and Ulay's performance art piece, The Great Wall Walk, involved the artists walking the entire length of the Great Wall of China, meeting in the middle to say goodbye to each other and end their personal and professional relationship.
23. Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy was a surreal and visceral performance art piece in which she and her collaborators danced and writhed in piles of raw meat.
24. The character of Maude, played by Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski, was based on two real-life performance artists, Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneemann, who were known for painting canvas while suspended naked on a harness attached to the ceiling in the mid-1970s.
25. Marina Abramovi?'s static and silent performance art piece, The Artist Is Present, lasted for 736 hours and 30 minutes, during which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium and faced 1,545 sitters, including celebrities like James Franco, Björk, Alan Rickman, Jennifer Carpenter, and Lou Reed.
