It seems as though Marina Abramovic may have to eat some crow as a part of her next performance art piece. Earlier this week, the performance artist criticized Jay Z for "completely using her" for the concept of his "Picasso Baby" music video and never delivered on a donation for her organization. But, lucky for the rapper, he kept tally, proving that he did come through on his promise.
In a statement to The Source, Abramovic acknowledged that Jay Z did, in fact, contribute to her Marina Abramovic Institute. She just happened to be unaware of the charitable donation.
"Marina Abramovic was not informed of Shawn "JAY Z" Carter's donation from two years ago when she recently did an interview with Spike Magazine in Brazil. We are sincerely sorry to both Marina Abromovic and Shawn "JAY Z" Carter for this, and since then we have taken appropriate actions to reconcile this matter," the institute said in a press release sent out on Wednesday, May 20.
The short tiff between Abramovic and Jay Z started out after the artist gave an interview earlier this month, claiming that Jay Z had broken his promise to donate money to her after taking her concept from "The Artist Is Present" for a music video.
"The day before, he came to my office and I gave him an entire power point presentation and said: okay, you can help me, because I really need help to build this thing. Then he just completely used me. And that wasn't fair. This is very different from Lady Gaga, for example, who has done great work for me. Just by having 45 million followers, she brought all these young kids into my public," she said, before saying he never donated.
