Meet Marina Abramović – the iconic, uncompromising performance artist whose work pushes the limits of body, mind and audience connection. For over five decades, Abramović has staged daring acts that question endurance, intimacy and trust – transforming live art into unforgettable, life-altering encounters.

From Belgrade to the world stage

Growing up,  Marina Abramović would never have thought she’d become one of the most influential artists in the world. Born in 1946, she was raised in Belgrade, then part of Yugoslavia, by a strict and politically prominent family during the communist rule of Josip Tito. Her early life was marked by order, religion and silence. Art became her outlet. She became a student at the Academy of Fine Art in Belgrade and trained as a painter, but by her twenties was already breaking away from the traditional path and experimenting with performance.

In the 1970s, she began using her own body as a central material. It wasn’t for shock value – though plenty of people were shocked – but a way to explore pain, trust and the limits of human endurance. One of her early pieces, and now one of her most well known, Rhythm 0, involved her standing still for six hours while strangers were invited to do whatever they wanted to her using a table full of objects. The result was both disturbing and unforgettable.

Partners in time 

In Amsterdam in 1976, Marina met the German artist Ulay and the two became inseparable – both creatively and romantically. Together, they created a series of powerful performances, exploring themes of trust, duality and endurance.

Their performances became famed for their intense physical feats, such as Breathing In/Breathing Out (1977), where the pair exchanged breaths until collapsing from lack of oxygen, or Rest Energy (1980), where Marina held a bow steady while Ulay aimed an arrow straight at her heart, fully pulled back.

Their final collaboration, The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (1988), was both an ending and a farewell. Each started at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and walked for 90 days to meet in the middle. When they did, they said goodbye – it was the end of their relationship and their collaboration.

Staying still, saying everything

After parting ways with Ulay, Marina’s solo work took on new dimensions. She began creating durational performances that required immense discipline – often remaining still, silent or engaged in repetitive actions for hours or days on end.

In 1997, she staged the durational work Balkan Baroque at the Venice Biennale, which saw her receive the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion award. Over a period of four days she scrubbed thousands and thousands of bloody cow bones in reference to the ethnic cleansing that had taken place in the Balkans during the 1990s. Her bloodstained hands served as a reminder that the war couldn’t be cleansed of shame.

Another of her most well-known durational works, The Artist Is Present, took place at MoMA in 2010. For every day over two months, she sat silently at a table, inviting visitors to sit across from her and make eye contact. Some lasted seconds. Others broke down crying. She didn’t speak and barely moved yet the impact was enormous. Among the attendees moved by this piece were artists, actors and performers Bjork, Kim Cattrall, Jemima Kirke, Lady Gaga, Lou Reed and Alan Rickman.

Spiritual journeys

Over time, Abramović’s work has become more focused on the spiritual and communal. In 2024, she opened Glastonbury Festival, leading a 200,000 strong crowd in seven minutes of silence to reflect on peace and humanity. She has studied rituals from cultures around the world and incorporated these ideas into her art, and began to work with natural materials like copper, iron, wood and minerals. The artist’s Transitory Objects series uses these materials in a gallery setting, inviting audiences to interact with materials to trigger a physical or mental reaction.

She founded the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) to support long-durational performance and to create space for other artists to experiment. Through MAI, her legacy is no longer just about the work she makes, but how she passes on knowledge. She’s trained younger performers to recreate her early pieces, led workshops designed to build mental resilience and endurance and redefined what it means to make art with time rather than objects.

No stranger to Manchester

Building on the work of MAI, for the 2009 Manchester International Festival, Abramović brought a specially curated group of international artists specialising in long durational work to The Whitworth for a life-altering four hours of live art. Kitted out in lab coats, the audience was taken through a communal drill by Abramović before being left to wander the gallery and experience performances over several hours.

In 2011, she returned to Manchester International Festival with The Life and Death of Marina Abramović – an epic performance where the artist handed her life, work and legacy over to legendary director Robert Wilson for him to remake entirely. A mixture of theatre, opera and art The Life and Death featured spellbinding performances from all involved, including Hollywood mainstay Willem Dafoe, musician Anohni and Abramović herself.

Balkan Erotic Epic

In 2025, Marina returns to Manchester with Balkan Erotic Epic – a powerful new live performance that reimagines and expands on her 2005 video work of the same name. Taking place at Aviva Studio, Balkan Erotic Epic brings together 78 performers for an immersive, four-hour durational experience.

The work draws on Balkan traditions, erotic folklore and ancestral rituals – challenging shame around sexuality and reasserting the body as a site of power, history and myth. Audiences journey through a performance environment, encountering surreal, intimate and provocative scenes, underscored by a live Serbian music overture.

As with much of Marina’s work, Balkan Erotic Epic is as much about the viewer as it is the performer, asking each person to step into discomfort, presence and transformation.

Marina Abramović has always asked her audience to do more than just look. To feel. To wait. To take part. Balkan Erotic Epic offers another chance to experience that challenge in real time.

Balkan Erotic Epic runs from 9 to 19 October 2025. Find out more here.

Lead image: Marina Abramović. The Hero. C-print. Spain. 2001. Ph: TheMahler.com. Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archive.