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Visitors to an art exhibition must squeeze between a naked man and woman standing in a doorway.

The exhibition by the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic at the at the Royal Academy in London next year will lead to the extraordinary challenge for visitors.

However, there's likely to be an option for people to go round if they choose between two adjoining gallery rooms.

It will be Abramovic's first major exhibition in Britain after a 50-year career which has seen her produce more than 50 works.

She will oversee workshops in which performers will be selected.

(Image: Alamy Stock Photo)

She is well known for Imponderabilia - a performance that was first staged in Italy 42 years ago with the German artist Ulay, who was her personal and professional partner at the time, the Guardian reports.

The original work at the Galeria Communale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna involved the naked pair effectively acting as human doorposts, as visitors had to squeeze between them (or walk around them) to get into the show.

This time, it will be performed by a succession of young volunteers as Abramovic is now 72 years old and broke up with Ulay more than three decades ago.

They marked their separation by walking the length of the Wall of China from opposite ends and then meeting in the middle.

(Image: Alamy Stock Photo)

Andrea Tarsia, the Royal Academy's head of exhibitions, said the 1977 work "proposed a confrontation between nakedness, and the gender, the sexuality, the desire."

He added: "Some [of the audience] stood back and couldn't quite handle it. Some went through. Some fairly charged through. Some went through a number of times."

The piece was less focused on the artist, but rather the reaction of the audience - who were filmed as they walked through and reacted to the experience.

(Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Not all of her art has been a success.

In one performance of Rhythm 5 in 1974, she created a large star soaked in petrol, which she lit. She then threw in her cut toenails and hair, before lying down in the centre. Unfortunately, suffering from oxygen deprivation, she fell unconscious and had to be rescued by a doctor and members of the audience."

For her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010, she sat on a wooden chair for seven hours a day, six days a week. Whereas, in 2014 at her show at the Serpentine Gallery in London, she was a hologram.

The exhibition will run at The Royal Academy in London from September to December 8 2020.