Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic at Aviva Studios

A major new work from one of the world’s most fearless and influential artists, Balkan Erotic Epic arrives at Aviva Studios this October with all the intensity, scale and provocation that have defined Marina Abramović’s five-decade career. It marks the largest performance work she’s ever staged – and one of the most ambitious commissions Factory International has undertaken to date.

Featuring a cast of more than 70 performers, Balkan Erotic Epic draws on centuries of myth, ritual and erotic folklore from Abramović’s native Balkans. Structured across thirteen visceral scenes and ranging from the intimate to the elemental, it’s a powerful excavation of ancestral knowledge and taboo-breaking expression, asking us to reconsider the body not as something shameful or profane, but as a source of power, pleasure and spiritual connection.

Throughout the performance, audiences are free to navigate the space and discover the work in their own time, encountering moments that range from fevered fertility rites to songs of mourning and ecstasy. There are breasts massaged to awaken the earth, bodies pressed to the soil in desperate acts of invocation, and storm-banishers who bare themselves to the sky – performances that speak to a time when sexuality was sacred, when human desire was understood as something cosmic and cyclical rather than commodified.

“In our culture today, we label anything erotic as pornography,” Abramović says. “This gives me a chance to go back to my Slavic roots, to ancient rituals, and to deal with sexuality in relation to the universe and the unanswered questions of our existence.”

For those familiar with Abramović’s work – from The Artist is Present to her many physically demanding endurance pieces – Balkan Erotic Epic will feel both like a continuation and a deepening of her lifelong exploration of pain, power, memory and transcendence. But there’s something especially urgent here too – a reclaiming of ritual in a disenchanted world, a return to bodies and mythologies that once held social and spiritual meaning.

Commissioned by Factory International with leading partners across Europe and the US, this is a rare opportunity for UK audiences to experience Abramović’s vision on such an epic scale. The production will go on to tour internationally, but it all begins here in Manchester.

John McGrath, Artistic Director of Factory International, told us, “Marina connects with audiences across the globe – from the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury to MoMA in New York. This performance is bold, immersive, and on a scale that’s truly unprecedented.”

Alongside the performance run, Abramović will give an exclusive artist talk at Aviva Studios on 11 October – a chance to hear directly from one of contemporary art’s most iconic and unflinching voices. Don’t miss it.