Marat Guelman, the Russian art impresario who recently moved to Montenegro will be working with the performance artist Marina Abramovic to develop her Marina Abramović Community Centre Obod Cetinje in the former Yugoslav republic’s old royal capital.
Guelman has been working with the Uzbek-born American real estate developer Neil Emilfarb, who is building residences and a marina in Budva, to establish the Dukley European Art Community. When Guelman heard that there had been little movement on Abramovic’s Obod project, he visited the performance artist in New York.
Guelman says that he and Emilfarb proposed a strategy to develop Abramovic’s Obod centre, stimulate Montenegro’s creative industries and turn the Dukley venture into an international arts project. “I think she really liked it,” Guelman says of his meeting with Abramovic.
In 2012, the architects Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu visited Montenegro to discuss the design of Abramovic’s 140,000 sq. m space in the former Obod refrigerator factory.
Abramovic, who is of Montenegrin origin, and Filip Vujanovic, Montenegro’s president, announced plans for the performing arts centre at the Venice Biennale in 2011. She said that she hoped it would open in 2013 and that she envisioned it as an interdisciplinary centre similar to the Bauhaus, a description that she has also applied to her centre in Hudson, New York. Montenegrin government officials said it would stimulate the local economy.
A spokeswoman for the Marina Abramovic Institute in New York said that the artist was travelling and could not comment on the project.