Marina Abramović’s Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition *** (Three out of five stars) Marina Abramović’s main exhibition at the Gropius Bau begins with a tiny female figurine from the sixth century BC standing in a vitrine. It’s a fascinating little object with delicate markings and rounded, plump thighs – at once both mysterious and carnal. It’s a surprising starting point for the exhibition, which leaves out much of Abramović’s naff esoteric stuff to focus on her work with the human body, with all its fleshy
lust and perverse rituals. First comes ‘Magic Potions’, an animated film ridiculing Western fantasies of the hypersexualised Balkans (is this really a thing?) with salacious tales of earthen fertility and wedding night seductions. Around it, giant phallic towers push up out of the soil-strewn floor. Abramović first made a name for herself through her performance pieces, filled with astounding feats of physical endurance, often using her naked body. They can make for a horrible watch, as in ‘Balkan Baroque’ (1997), when, for four days, the
artist surrounded herself with cow carcasses, scrubbing the bones until the sinewy joints and tendons were red and raw. Made after the Srebrenica massacre, the work carries a monstrous symbolic weight. Since then, the video works have grown in ambition, but often at the expense of their visceral punch. The recent film ‘Orgy’ (2025), in a desperate attempt at emotional force, dreadfully misfires with its operatic wails and dancers crawling through dirt among skeletons. Some film installations are more up to her level, especially the
video works in the next door room, where ‘Scaring the Gods to Stop the Rain’, featuring a troupe of women joyously hitching their skirts in a vivid, rain-drenched fertility ritual, is contrasted with the dour, black-and-white footage of male bottoms humping the ground relentlessly in, ‘Fucking the Ground / Fertility Rites’. But it’s hit and miss. When making art, you have to take some risks and some works are bound to fail. Cringe, though at times coruscating. And despite it all, you know you’re in
the presence of greatness. Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition is on at Gropius Bau through Aug 23, details
Marina Abramović, Gropius Bau, Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition, Magic Potions, Orgy 2025, Balkan Baroque 1997, Scaring the Gods to Stop the Rain, Fucking the Ground / Fertility Rites, Srebrenica massacre