In spring 2026, Berlin's Gropius Bau will become the venue for one of the most intense artistic explorations of the body, ritual, and memory. With Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition, performance icon Marina Abramović presents her most personal and politically charged work to date—a journey into the mythologies of the Balkans and the archaic energies of human existence.
Abramović, who has been radically redefining the body as an artistic medium since the 1970s, combines historical works with current video and stage installations in this exhibition. The focus is on her Balkan Erotic Epic series of works, developed since 2005, which deals with folk rituals, eroticism, fertility, and death. Inspired by Southeast European myths, Abramović shows the body not as an individual but as a collective, almost cosmic tool—as a repository of cultural memory and a resistance to historical oblivion.
The exhibition gets off to an impressive start with the video work Tito's Funeral (2025), which is shown in the freely accessible atrium. Here, Abramović combines historical images of Josip Broz Tito's funeral with traditional mourning rituals of Southeast Europe. The rhythmic lamentations and beating of the mourners create a trance-like atmosphere in which political history, collective emotion, and physical experience flow into one another.
Marina Abramović, Balkan Baroque I, performance, XLVII Venice Biennale, June 1997 © Marina Abramović, courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
The Kafana installation creates a social space for remembrance. The typical Balkan pub becomes a symbol of social encounter in socialist Yugoslavia—a place where community, music, and political reality merge. Visitors can become part of the scene themselves and immerse themselves in the atmosphere of a cultural interstice.
The exhibition is divided into three chapters: The Political Body, Eroticism of the Earth, and Eroticism and Death. Particularly provocative is the video work Magic Potions (2025), in which Abramović reflects on ethnographic stereotypes with an ironic gaze. Archaic fertility rituals are staged here as poetic and at the same time satirical commentaries on the Western perception of the Balkans. In this way, the artist questions colonial perspectives and rehabilitates traditional, embodied knowledge as a cultural resource.
Another highlight is the performance Nude with Skeleton (2002/2026), in which the breathing body interacts with a skeleton as a symbol of the close connection between life, death, and spirituality. This work particularly clearly demonstrates Abramović's central artistic stance: transformation through endurance, physicality, and spiritual concentration. With works such as Rhythm 5, Lips of Thomas, and Spirit Cooking, the exhibition is staged as a retrospective of her entire oeuvre. It shows how consistently Abramović understands eroticism as a political and spiritual form of energy—as a counter-model to social control and as an expression of individual and collective freedom.
Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition is thus more than a retrospective. It is a performative space about memory, myth, and the future—and a compelling invitation to once again understand the body as a cultural and political resonance space.
April 15 to August 23, 2026
www.berlinerfestspiele.de/gropius-bau
Marina Abramović, Nude with Skeleton, performance for video, Belgrade, 2002–2005 © Marina Abramović, courtesy of Marina Abramović Archives / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026, photo: Attilio Maranzano
