Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present, 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abramović sat silently opposite museum visitors for eight hours a day for three months, a total of 750 hours.^[1]

The artist Abel Azcona during The Death of The Artist at Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid

Endurance art is a kind of performance art involving some form of hardship, such as pain, solitude or exhaustion.^[2] Performances that focus on the passage of long periods of time are also known as durational art or durational performances.^[3]

Writer Michael Fallon traces the genre to the work of Chris Burden in California in the 1970s.^[4] Burden spent five days in a locker in Five Day Locker Piece (1971), had himself shot in Shoot (1971), and lived for 22 days in a bed in an art gallery in Bed Piece (1972).^[5]

Other examples of endurance art include Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece), in which for 12 months he punched a time clock every hour, and Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984 (Rope Piece), in which Hsieh and Linda Montano spent a year tied to each other by an eight-foot rope.^[6]

In The House with the Ocean View (2003), Marina Abramović lived silently for 12 days without food or entertainment on a stage entirely open to the audience.^[7] Such is the physical stamina required for some of her work that in 2012 she set up what she called a "boot camp" in Hudson, New York, for participants in her multiple-person performances.^[8]

The Nine Confinements or The Deprivation of Liberty is a conceptual, endurance art and performative work of critical and biographical content by artist Abel Azcona. The artwork was a sequence of performances carried out between 2013 and 2016. All of the series had a theme of deprivation of liberty. The first in the series was performed by Azcona in 2013 and named Confinement in Search of Identity.^[9] The artist was to remain for sixty days in a space built inside an art gallery of Madrid, with scarce food resources and in total darkness. The performance was stopped after forty-two days for health reasons and the artist hospitalised.^[10] Azcona created these works as a reflection and also a discursive interruption of his own mental illness, mental illness being one of the recurring themes in Azcona's work.^[11]

Examples

Tehching Hsieh spent a year in this cage in his studio in One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece).

• Marina Abramović^[12] – Rhythm 5, 1974; Luminosity, 1997, 2010; Nude with Skeleton, 2002, 2005, 2010;^[8] The House With the Ocean View (2003); Balkan Erotic Epic, 2005.^[13]
• Marina Abramović with Ulay^[14] – Point of Contact, 1980;^[8] Night Sea Crossing, 1981; The Lovers: Walk on the Great Wall, 1988.^[15]
• Vito Acconci – Seedbed, 1972.^[16]
• David Askevold – Fill, 1970.^[17][18]
• Abel Azcona - The Death of The Artist,^[19] 2018. The Fathers, 2016. Amen or The Pederasty, 2015. Buried, 2015. Eating, 2012. The Nine Confinements or The Deprivation of Liberty, 2013-2016.
• Stuart Brisley – And for today ... nothing, 1972.^[20]
• Chris Burden^[14] – Five Day Locker Piece, 1971.
• David Blaine^[21] – Witness (1999),^[22] Buried Alive, Frozen in Time, Vertigo, Above the Below, Drowned Alive, Revolution , Electrified , Ascension .
• Jimmy Donaldson – Counting to 100,000, watching It's Everyday Bro for 10 hours, 50 hours buried alive, fasting for 30 days, 2016 - ongoing.
• Nikhil Chopra, – Give Me Your Blood And I Will Give You Freedom, 2014.^[23]
• Houston Conwill – Juju Rituals, 1975–1983.^[24]
• Elevator Repair Service – Gatz, 2005.^[23][25]
• EJ Hill – A Monumental Offering of Potential Energy, 2016.^{[26][27][28][29]}
• Tehching Hsieh – One Year Performance 1978–1979 (Cage Piece); One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece).^[30][31]
• Tehching Hsieh with Linda Montano – Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984 (Rope Piece).
• Ragnar Kjartansson – A Lot of Sorrow, 2014.^[32]
• Stan Lai – A Dream Like A Dream, 2014.^[23]
• Eric Millikin – My Drinking Problem, 2016.^[33][34]
• Bruce Nauman – Stamping in the Studio, 1968; Revolving Upside Down, 1969.^[17][35][36]
• Bryan Lewis Saunders – Under the Influence, 2001;^[37] Deaf Month, 2011;^[38] While Being Tortured, 2014;^[39] 30 Days Totally Blind, 2018.^[40]
• Carolee Schneeman – Up To And Including Her Limits, 1973—1976.^[17]
• Wolfgang Stoerchle – Attempt Public Erection, 1972–1975.^[24]
• Emma Sulkowicz – Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), 2014–2015.^[41][14]
• Zhang Huan – 12 Square Meters, 1994.^[42]
• Benjamin Bennett – Sitting and Smiling, 2014 – ongoing.^[43]
• Guido Segni – A quiet desert failure, 2013 – ongoing.^{[44][45][46][47][48][49]}