Art experts say Abramovic's performance piece should acknowledge similar work by her contemporary

Artist Marina Abramovic and London's Serpentine Gallery are embroiled in a row over "nothing".

A group of curators and art historians have written to the gallery questioning why the New York-based Serbian-born Abramovic's latest performance piece - which is on until August 25 and about which she has stressed the importance of "nothing" - fails to acknowledge the influence of another contemporary artist who has made "nothing" central to her work.

Mary Ellen Carroll, a New York-based conceptual artist, has been working on her Nothing project since the 1990s. She has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum in New York and the ICA in London, and is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. She also exhibited with Abramovic in a group show at the Smart Museum in Chicago in 2012.

The art experts, who have written to Serpentine curator Hans Ulrich Obrist asking him for clarification, fear that without recognition, Carroll's work would be overshadowed by Abramovic's, and that Carroll would find it difficult to perform Nothing in future.

Among those who have been in touch with Obrist are art historian David Joselit, distinguished professor at City University of New York and former Carnegie professor of the history of art at Yale, Frazer Ward, professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and an authority on performance art, and Yona Backer, arts consultant to the Lambent Foundation.

Joselit says the works are different, but both address the "question of nothing. Doing nothing", and the gallery and artist must "acknowledge this genealogy".

Abramovic's piece, 512 Hours, sees the artist appearing in the Serpentine's Hyde Park gallery from 10am to 6pm, six days a week, until August 25. It is billed as "a unique work created for the Serpentine".