writing – Kat Dornian

Drawings of Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramović

In 2018, as a means to practice sketching, I started a project where I did blind, continuous line drawings of the portraits taken of people after they attended The Artist is Present. Admittedly, I broke the continuity of the lines a lot, but I tried to embody the spirit of the practice—to feel my way through the space on the page rather than relying on my site.

The Artist is Present was the titular performance art piece debuted at the MOMA in New York in Spring 2010 as part of a retrospective of Abramović’s work. In the piece, Marina Abramović sat at a simple table in the atrium of MOMA while spectators sat silently opposite her and maintained eye contact with the artist.

Photographer Marco Anelli captured 1,545 portraits of spectators during the run of the performance, 260 of which are featured on his website. There is scant information about the subject of the portrait, save for a portrait number and how long they sat with Abramović, the latter of which I’ve used to title my drawings.

Over the years, I’ve done only 12 drawings of the portraits. I enjoy that the result mimics the way a message gets twisted in a game of Telephone, making more obvious the fact that this is art made from art made from art.

28 minutes
164 minutes
26 minutes
3 minutes
18 minutes
1 hour 17 minutes
29 minutes
6 hours 26 minutes
5 minutes
16 minutes
3 minutes
11 minutes

As a strange aside, the first drawing I did on August 6th, 2018 is of Brian. Brian has, what he calls, a bit of a “curse” of going viral on the internet. I heard about this guy on an episode of Reply All, where he talks about all the strange places his face has shown up and gotten him in trouble.

Anyway, I wanted to put the portraits out there and encourage others to try one! It’s quite simple:

Select a portrait you like and pull it up on your screen.
Grab a thin/medium-tip black felt pen (5-7mm is what I use) and paper that’s good for inks (printer paper or cardstock is fine). Place your pen on the page and look at the portrait. Slowly start following the lines in the portrait with your eyes, and while doing that, trace what you’re seeing with the pen on the paper, but don’t look at the paper. Proceed until you feel you have followed all the lines of the face.
Grab a small bundle of pencil crayons or coloured pencils and add tones where it feels right. I worked with a limited palette of four brown hues, a white, and a black.
Write the title and date. Admire.

Good luck with your art, and if you feel bold, share what you did in the comments.

References

Abramović, Marina. The Artist is Present. 2010, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Anelli, Marco. Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramović. DAMIANI, 2012.

“Permanent Record.” Reply All from Spotify, 13 June 2019, open.spotify.com/episode/0eWJleTlWawIpQ16TZdMig.

Ways a Moment Breathes

I was told that humans can expand their lungs 60% in capacity when they breathe. That full breath—as large as the universe—rains a counterintuitive calm through the spine and nervous system. I’ve had to rebuild my lung capacity, breathing into a spirometer to track my progress. In those early days I could only lift the blue plastic ball in the tube the height of a fly, then the height of a matchbook, before weeks passed and I could breathe the universe again.

There have been times when moments felt beyond vast, as if as large as life. In these times, I could feel my DNA, the building blocks of me, held in the bodies of my parents and their parents and so on, all the way back to before homo sapiens, then before mammals, then to that first creature to breathe on this planet impossibly destined to create me. In these moments where I felt so magnificently small and part of something so vast, I could feel my body extend thousands of millions of years into the future as particles and ideas and interactions sent on their course of collisions to who knows where. I could act on plans years and decades away as though they sat at my feet. I could act, not with certainty, but hope.

Abraham Lake, where sea fauna excrete methane caught in bubbles under clear ice. (Kat Dornian)

More often, now, there are moments so small, just a smile on my face and a breeze in the air. A moment of just hearing the gentle stream of water hit the sides of the tea kettle—listening for the boil. Smelling the aromas of cardamom and cloves and cinnamon lift in the air. All sounds, smells, and glittering light passing as soon as they appear. More often I need these fleeting moments. I need to focus on the next thing in front of me without becoming overwhelmed with the many paths one decision can take. I know this slowing down and focusing has been what I’ve needed, but the inability to hold the broader moment scares me and later fills me with the most regrets. But I never regret a moment of simply stopping to enjoy.

What I love about moments is the ambiguity of the amount of time they hold, like the length of a string or the air in a vessel. Moments, no matter how ephemeral or vast, seem best when perceived widely and openly.

Awoken

The time to sing dawns.
Wren, robin, finch and jay rouse
sleepy Helios
with beaks and lyres blazing,
plucking notes from dusky streams.

—Kat Dornian, 2025

Dark Days

Content warning: still about terminal cancer.

The dark is getting to me this year—persistent, cold, bitter. But, I’ll be damned if I let it stop me. One thing I know about the dark, is it must be faced. Not feared. Not ignored. Not fought. Not run from. And, for goodness sake, not given into.

That’s my weakness—giving in. I’m captivated by the dark. The stars, that milky stroke across the sky, the fleeting shadows, and the mystery draw me in. I could easily fall into the dark and let it consume me. Indeed, for much of the last four years I’ve had to hide in the dark to protect my skin, sanity, and immune system—staying away from sun and people.

Rod and I went to Dinosaur Provincial Park in September.

A month ago, I sat in my doctor’s office and tears trickled down my cheeks, my breath caught in my throat, and sobs rang from my chest. I held my heart like a hug—a way to comfort myself. My onocologist handed me the tissue box. I’d just been told that the treatment I’m on usually extends survival by about 10 months. It’s a hard thing to hear. I’d just turned 39 and the laughter of my best friend’s first child still rang in my ears from the day before. There’s always light in the darkness, those stars that make the shadows flicker.

It’s not easy getting bad news as the nights grow longer and days become colder. There’s fewer activities to distract me and I’m forced to stay still, to nest… and ruminate. Furthermore, my new treatment makes me quite fatigued, which suits the 16 hour-long nights, but not keeping busy. Still, I get up the next day and make a grocery list because, goodness, I’ve dealt with everything else ad nauseam.

But this is what I’m talking about. I can give in too easy. I can plan so much for darkness that may never come (some darkness always does though). But my weakness is also my strength, because I can also plan for miserable things that need to be planned for. Not that I think death is miserable or dark, per se. But, to be honest, I still like life quite a lot and want to get the full experience—the good and bad, the sublime and imperfect, the light and dark—before I become dust and soil. And, so, I am looking at options. I may be going to the States next year for treatment, if I qualify. There’s a clinical trial coming to Calgary that may be a strong option for me.

And so, I dwell in the darkness of the season, for a bit. I go for walks when the low-hanging sun hits my face. I let stars guide me to new horizons and opportunities, being ready for what may come.