Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered performance as a visual art form. She created some of the most important early works in this practice, including Rhythm 0 (1974), in which she offered herself as an object of experimentation for the audience, as well as Rhythm 5 (1974), where she lay in the center of a burning five-point star to the point of losing consciousness. These performances married concept with physicality, endurance with empathy, complicity with loss of control, passivity with danger. They pushed the boundaries of self- discovery, both of herself and her audience. They also marked her first engagements with time, stillness, energy, pain, and the resulting heightened consciousness generated by long durational performance.

In 2012, she founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), a nonprofit foundation for performance art, that focuses on performance, long durational works, and the use of the Abramović Method. MAI is a platform for immaterial and long durational work to create new possibilities for collaboration among thinkers of all fields.

Abramović was one of the first performance artists to become formally accepted by the institutional museum world with major solo shows taking place throughout Europe and the US over a period of more than 25 years. In 2023, Abramović will be the first female artist to host a major solo exhibition in the Main Galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her first European retrospective The Cleaner was presented at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2017, followed by presentations at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark; Henie Onstad, Sanvika, Norway (2017); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany (2018), Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun, Poland (2019); and concluding at the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, Serbia (2019). In 2010, Abramović had her first major US retrospective and simultaneously performed for over 700 hours in The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1997, Abramović was awarded the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist for her performance Balkan Baroque at the Venice Biennale. In 2006, Abramović received the US Art Critics Association Award for Best Exhibition of Time Based Art for her performance Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim in New York City. In 2008, Abramović received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art in Vienna. In 2011, she was awarded Honorary Royal Academician status by The Royal Academy in London. In 2013, Abramović was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Officer for her work in Bolero, Paris. In 2014, Abramović was named one of the 100 Most Influential People by TIME Magazine. In 2021, Abramović was awarded the Princess de Asturias Award for the Arts in Spain and the Golden Medal for Merits from the Republic of Serbia.

Ralph Fiennes has enjoyed an extensive career acting in theater, film, and television as well as producing and directing film. His last stage appearance was in T. S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets at The Pinter Theatre, which followed a national tour of the UK. Prior to that he appeared in Beat the Devil by David Hare at the Bridge Theatre, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Both productions were performed under Covid social distancing rules. Fiennes was previously directed by Hytner as Edmund in King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His many other theater credits include Hamlet, Ivanov, Richard II, and Coriolanus for the Almeida, and Antony and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, Richard III, The Master Builder, God of Carnage, and Faith Healer. His many film credits include Schindler’s List, The English Patient, The Constant Gardener, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and the roles of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films and M in Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time To Die. He has also directed three feature films: Coriolanus, The Invisible Woman, and The White Crow. Fiennes’s recent films include The King’s Man, The Dig, and The Forgiven. Forthcoming films include The Menu and Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.

Drummer, DJ, producer, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, and member of The Roots, Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson is the unmistakable heartbeat of Philadelphia’s most influential hip hop group. He is the musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where his beloved Roots crew serves as house band. Beyond that, this five-time Grammy Award–winning musician’s indisputable reputation has landed him musical directing positions with everyone from D’Angelo to Eminem to Jay-Z. Questlove has also released multiple books including the New York Times bestsellers Mo’ Meta Blues and Creative Quest, Grammy-nominated audio book Creative Quest, Soul Train: The Music, Dance and Style of a Generation, James Beard Award–nominated somethingtofoodabout, and most recently Mixtape Potluck.

Questlove and Black Thought of The Roots have executive produced the acclaimed documentary series Hip-Hop: The Songs The Shook America on AMC under their production company, Two One Five Entertainment, which recently announced a first-look deal with Universal Television to develop scripted and non-scripted programming. Questlove will serve as executive producer for the upcoming documentary The League, centered on the tumultuous journey of Negro league baseball. He also made his directorial debut with the acclaimed feature documentary Summer of Soul, which explores the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. The film premiered on the opening night of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in January, where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for Best US Documentary. The film most recently broke the record for the highest selling documentary to come out of Sundance when it was acquired by Searchlight/Hulu. Questlove is also set to direct the upcoming Sly Stone feature documentary.

Questlove has cemented himself as one of the most sought-after DJs in pop culture with a résumé that includes gigs for the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, the White House, Cartier, and hotels and nightclubs around the world. After streaming nearly 300 virtual DJ sets in 2020, he has used this momentum to launch his own Twitch show called GO DJ, which champions sets from renowned international peers.

Additionally, Questlove served as the executive music producer and composer on the A&E miniseries Roots. He also scored Chris Rock’s film Top Five and co-produced the Grammy Award–winning original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton. Questlove also hosts his own acclaimed podcast Questlove Supreme on iHeart. Questlove co-starred in Disney Pixar’s Golden Globe–winning animated feature Soul, which landed him an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance.