Marina Abramović, the undisputed pioneer of performance art, turns 80 next year — but slowing down isn’t on her agenda. The Serbian artist, who has spent decades transforming endurance, pain, and vulnerability into art, is returning to the UK with her most ambitious project yet: Balkan Erotic Epic, opening tomorrow at Aviva Studios in Manchester.
Known for testing both body and mind in her performances, Abramović has famously endured 700 hours of silent eye contact with strangers, invited audiences to use dangerous objects on her body — including a loaded gun — and even lay within a burning wooden star until she nearly suffocated. She has screamed until she lost her voice, consumed honey and wine before cutting herself, and stood motionless as a live snake coiled across her body.
Now, she’s revisiting her roots with a four-hour ritual performance that merges sexuality, spirituality, and ancient Balkan traditions. The production brings together over 70 performers — singers, dancers, and musicians — to explore the relationship between eroticism and existence.
Scenes include women using their bodies to “scare the gods” and “awaken the earth,” alongside large-scale projections symbolizing fertility and cosmic energy. It’s provocative, primal, and unapologetically human — in other words, classic Abramović.
“In our culture, anything erotic is immediately labeled pornographic,” Abramović explains. “With Balkan Erotic Epic, I want to reclaim that power — to reconnect sexuality with spirituality, the universe, and the mystery of our existence.”
She describes the work as her most ambitious creation to date, one that captures “poetry, desperation, pain, hope, and mortality.”
Audiences are free to move throughout the space as the performance unfolds, becoming part of an experience that challenges one simple but profound question: What are our bodies truly for?
John McGrath, artistic director and CEO of Factory International, calls it “an unmissable opportunity to witness the next chapter in Abramović’s creative life — bold, immersive, and unlike anything seen before.”
“Balkan Erotic Epic” runs in Manchester through October 19, inviting viewers to confront — and perhaps celebrate — the strange beauty of being human.
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