Lisson Gallery home page

'Breast-kneaders, skeleton orgies and five-metre-high penises: Marina Abramović on her most daring show ever' – The Guardian

3 October 2025

The great performance artist reveals all about her new four-hour Balkan Erotic Epic – a wild reinvention of ancient rituals that is sure to shock, move and amuse audiences

Marina Abramović is sitting in a rehearsal studio in Manchester, tucking into lamb chops and ajvar. The latter is a red pepper and garlic relish, hailing from the Balkans. “It’s homemade,” she says, given to her by a friend. Her Irish assistant, Declan, who cooked the lamb, bustles around her amicably. Abramović is amicable too, offering me the chops and lathering ajvar on to a rice cake for me to taste (delicious).

It is a disarmingly cosy welcome from the high priestess of performance art. Then again, this might be the quiet before the storm. Her new show, Balkan Erotic Epic, a four-hour performance conceived and directed by Abramović and commissioned by Factory International, may ruffle some feathers. More than 70 actors, dancers and local performers will feature in 13 scenes that enact ancient ritual, rites and folklore from Slavic tradition. Many contain nudity and act out explicit eroticism that arises out of the tales collected from Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, Turkey, Serbia, and more.

“I found out,” she says, “that these ancient rituals for farming, for childbirth, for weddings, for funerals, with absolutely no exception, used the genitals – the vagina and the penis – in so many different ways.” Screens, film, music and animation will accompany live performance and fill the monumental 64-metre long, 21-metre high dimensions of Aviva Studios.

Read the full interview via The Guardian here.

Image: Marina Abramović, archival performance from the series Balkan Erotic Epic in Serbia, 2005. © Marina Abramović. Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives.

'Breast-kneaders, skeleton orgies and five-metre-high penises: Marina Abramović on her most daring show ever' – The Guardian
Click here for more In the Press
We use cookies on our website to improve your experience. You can find out why by reading our privacy policy. By continuing to browse our site you agree to our use of cookies Privacy Policy