All artists get criticized and to some, Marina's work may be deemed negative due to religious beliefs. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Abramovic was asked by an art critic to define the difference between performance art and theatre in which she replied...

"To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real."

In her 40 years as a performance artist, Abramovic has dealt in what she calls "true reality", often at great physical and psychological cost. She has stabbed her hand with knives and sliced her skin with razor blades. She has laid naked on a cross of ice for hours. She has allowed the public to prod, probe and abuse her body. Once she almost died when a performance, in which she lay inside a huge flaming star made of petrol-soaked sawdust, went horribly wrong. (The fire sucked the oxygen from around her, causing her to pass out. An audience member intervened and she was rushed to hospital with burns to her head and body.)

"I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself," she says, "but I also take the energy from the audience and transform it. It goes back to them in a different way. This is why people in the audience often cry or become angry or whatever. A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room."

So what makes a performing artist you ask?

It's an art form which artists use their body or voice to convey artistic expression.

Can you believe the first recorded use of the term performing artist was used in 1711?

There are all types of forms and genres within the term itself which includes dance, music, opera, theatre, magic, spoken words, circus arts, and musical theatre. In Abramovic's case, it goes against her idea that theatre is fake. I believe she has created her own idea of art but it's definitely one that has viewers cringing at the thought and I'm sure most of her audiences would never place themselves in a situation such as the type of performances in which Marina creates.