CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/7/2018

Celebrate Women's History Month with Marina Abramovic's rendition of 'The Ugly Duckling'

As a child, Marina Abramovic identified with the story of the Ugly Duckling. "Since I was very young I always felt like a misfit," she writes in her new illustrated version of the classic Hans Christian Andersen tale. "At one point in my diary I wrote that I felt ugly, fat and unwanted. Therefore my teenage years were desperately awkward and unhappy. I had skinny legs, orthopedic shoes, and ugly glasses. My mother cut my hair way above the ear and fixed it with a pin, and put me in heavy wool dresses. And I had a baby face with an impossibly big nose. In my mind I was the ugliest kid in my school." Then she found the medium of performance. "The moment I stepped in front of the public in my first performance, I experienced my transformation immediately, like I was hatching out of an egg. I left behind my doubts and low self-esteem and discovered my higher self. When I perform, I feel beautiful, radiant and powerful. Everything is possible, and the world around me becomes luminous."