It’s almost impossible not to ask yourself the question when you first encounter it: is this mourning, prayer, or resistance? Women beating their chests and massaging their breasts in collective ritual — Marina Abramović’s *Balkan Erotic Epic* doesn’t wait for you to settle into a comfortable interpretation. This summer, Gropius Bau has transformed itself to host one of performance art’s most enduring legends, and what’s on offer is far more than a retrospective survey.
Walking Through Ritual
*Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition* reconstructs the universe of performances Abramović has been staging since the early 1990s, now materialised through film and sculptural installations. Drawing on the folklore of the Balkans, where the artist was born and raised, the works reframe eroticism not as mere sexuality but as a force that binds life and death, the self and the cosmos. A living body is shown entwined with a skeleton; women wash, beat, and massage their breasts in rites of lamentation. These images are simultaneously rooted in deep cultural memory and entirely contemporary in their provocation.
As Abramović herself has said: “All energy we have in our body is sexual energy. We can use it for creativity, for spiritual matters or it becomes aggression, war, anger.” That framing is the key to unlocking the exhibition. Putting a body onstage — for pain, desire, or devotion — keeps the question of what is erotic, what is ritual, and what is political permanently, productively open.
From the Balkans to Berlin: Why Now?
The show was conceived by Gropius Bau Director Jenny Schlenzka and curator and musician Agnes Gryczkowska, and forms one of the flagship events of the Berliner Festspiele’s 75th anniversary programme. This is Abramović’s first major solo presentation in Berlin since the 1990s — not just an exhibition but a long-overdue conversation resumed between the artist and the city.
There’s also a second act: *Balkan Erotic Epic. The Stage Version*, a new multi-hour theatre production, will open the Performing Arts Season at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele in October 2026. Those who step into Abramović’s world this summer will find themselves returning through a different door in the autumn.
The Afterlife of Performance: Between Film and Sculpture
Abramović has argued for decades that performance can exist beyond the performing body. This exhibition is the proof. Moving through the rooms, you are not watching a finished work but witnessing a continuing ritual. Photography, film, sculptural installation — layers that complement each other but can each stand alone. The series *Women Massaging Breasts II* (2005), in particular, makes that thin line between grief and desire both visible and contested in a single gesture.
That the show opens in the same city as exhibitions interrogating the digital image — including the group show *The Lure of the Image* at C/O Berlin — feels like a meaningful coincidence. Where Abramović constructs body politics through physical rhythm, her contemporaries train their lens on the algorithmic. Berlin this summer oscillates between two poles: flesh and data.
Who Is Marina Abramović?
Born in Belgrade in 1946, Abramović has spent more than five decades using her body as both material and message, becoming one of the most influential figures in performance art. The *Rhythm* series (1970s), *Balkan Baroque* (Golden Lion at Venice Biennale, 1997), *The Artist is Present* (MoMA, 2010) — each a time capsule constructed to interrogate its era’s questions through the body. With this Berlin presentation, which reaches back to her Balkan origins, she once again expands the definition of what performance can leave behind.
### FAQ: Marina Abramović at Gropius Bau, Berlin
- When does the exhibition close?
Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition* runs until 30 August 2026, extended due to high demand. Gropius Bau is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 12:00–19:00, and Saturday and Sunday 10:00–19:00. Closed on Tuesdays.
- Who curated the show?
Agnes Gryczkowska (curator and musician) and Jenny Schlenzka (Director, Gropius Bau), with Elena Franziska Setzer (Assistant Curator) and Savannah Thümler (Curatorial Assistant).
- What is the connection to the Berliner Festspiele?
The exhibition is part of the Berliner Festspiele’s 75th anniversary programme. In October 2026, a theatrical version of *Balkan Erotic Epic* will open the Performing Arts Season at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
NO-26 Note
- Where: Gropius Bau, Berlin
- Until: 30 August 2026
- Tickets: Book in advance at berlinerfestspiele.de (check the official site for concessions and free-admission days)
This is a rare opportunity to step inside a performance artist’s bodily archive. Abramović left this summer in Berlin without being physically present — through the traces of the body. And those traces disappear on 30 August.
