Marina Abramović and Ornellaia Announce Her First Wine Collaboration
Limited edition bottles from the Italian winemaker’s Vendemmia d’Artista 2026 collection will be auctioned off at Bonham’s to benefit the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Performance artist Marina Abramović is the latest in an honored creative line to collaborate with the Tuscan winemaker Ornellaia. Each year, the company chooses a different artist for its Vendemmia d’Artista program. The honoree creates a unique series of signed labels for a limited edition, large-format bottle within the year’s vintage, as well as an estate artwork. The theme changes each year, drawing inspiration from special characteristics of the newly released wine.
The inspiration for the 2023 vintage, being released in 2026, is “Vitality.” As usual, Abramović has a complex, nuanced set of thoughts around the simplest of things. “Vitality is very important for human beings because we all are born, and we all are going to die. But at the same time, it is a big question. How long we can be vital, how long we can be productive, and how we can long actually in this vitality, prolong our lives,” she reflected.
As a performance artist, she found the interactive elements in the relationship between humans and wine beyond its manifest impact on the nervous system. Abramović created the labels for the double magnum bottles by drawing her head with grapes emerging from it, which to her resembled waves of vitality. These waves created a kind of positive Medusa effect.
Ornellaia aims to have each collaboration and the limited edition labels be as distinctive as the vintage itself. The Vendemmia d’Artista edition is made to be coveted. It consists of 100 double magnums, 10 imperials, and one salmanazar. Each label is signed and numbered by Abramović.
The Ornellaia 2023 “La Vitalità” wines will be auctioned online by Bonham’s in June in support of the upcoming Guggenheim Pop exhibition.