Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramovic has pioneered performance art, creating some of the form's most important early works. Exploring her physical and mental limits, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in her quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. Abramovic was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2010, Abramovic had her first major U.S. retrospective and simultaneously performed for over 700 hours in "The Artist is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Abramovic founded Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI), a platform for immaterial and long durational work to create new possibilities for collaboration among thinkers of all fields. Her most recent publication is Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, Published by Crown Archetype on October 25, 2016. Her retrospective The Cleaner opened at Moderna Museet, Stockholm in February 2017 and has toured to seven additional European venues, ending at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia in 2019. In September 2020 the Bayerische Staats Oper presented the world premiere of 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, which will continue to tour to other venues. In 2023 she will present the solo exhibition After Life at the Royal Academy, and become the first female artist in the institution's 250 year history to occupy the entire gallery space with her work.