Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a new ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world. Last week, Marina Abramović opened her first solo presentation in Berlin since the 1990s, the bombastically named, “Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition” at Gropius Bau. Set to run through August 23, the show brings together historical and recent works, tracing her long-standing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death, and the body as a site of political and spiritual intensity. Drawing on Balkan folklore, alongside Abramović’s performance history, the exhibition moves between film, installation, sculpture, and live action to create an environment where the boundaries between individual and collective experience are continually tested. At its core, the show frames the erotic as a driving force, linking fertility, mortality, and transformation. Moments of humor sit alongside lamentation and ritual intensity, underscoring the exhibition’s refusal of a single, fixed reading. Related Articles At the packed opening, a huge screen showed Abramović’s video work, Tito’s Funeral (2025), broadcasting women beating their chests in a near trance-like state, …