Lips Of Thomas:
I recommend you watch the whole video of her Seven Easy Pieces performance, but Lips Of Thomas is my favorite and it's one of her own. It starts at 0:55:03. She's nude throughout the whole thing, so NSFW.
This piece has a lot of political as well as christian themes. Marina is from Yugoslavia, a country that unfortunately has seen a lot of war. That context gives it a lot more meaning and adds another layer. Although I initially thought that the piece had a lot to do with pain and pleasure as well as sin and repentance/paying for sins. It seems almost as if she is punishing herself for drinking the wine and eating the honey, towards the end of the performance she seems less eager to eat the honey and even reluctant. To me, the more she punished herself the more it seem like the roles of pain and pleasure reversed themselves.
Balkan Baroque:
Unfortunately there isn't much footage of this piece, but here is a little footage as well as some pictures and an explanation from Marina.
(skip to 3:02 for start of performance)
This piece is also political in nature, and Marina describing how she felt helpless when the war in Bosnia started is really compelling. I think this piece is largely about confrontation of the subject, as Marina explains "You can't wash the blood from your hands [just] as you can't wash the shame from the war."
The Artist is Present:
For three months she sat and simply stared at museum goers in silence. You can find a lot of pictures of people crying, which is understandable, that wordless connection I think is really powerful and moving for a lot of people. In this clip you can see a few people come and go before Ulay (a performance artist and former lover and collaborator of Marina's) shows up after quite a few years of separation. The result is really touching.
