Marina Abramović—unilaterally considered a pioneer of performance art—was still having breakfast in the Austrian Alps when we spoke over Zoom. She was staying there in anticipation of traveling to Venice, where her exhibition “Transforming Energy” (May 6-October 18, 2026) will make her the first living woman to have an exhibition at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Venezia, installed amidst its Renaissance masterpieces. This “first” is no surprise—since the 1970s, Abramović has continually pushed the boundaries between body/mind and artist/audience, including with the groundbreaking show “The Artist Is Present” at MoMA in 2010.
Abramović’s assemblage of short films, “Seven Deaths” (a manifestation of her lifelong fascination with Maria Callas, the iconic opera diva of the 20th Century), is installed through November 30 in Cisternerne in Copenhagen, a former 19th-century underground water reservoir with a sensory-rich subterranean atmosphere. In its humid darkness, under high ceilings that originally held 16 million liters of water, the pronounced acoustic reverberation dramatically impacts how these seven arias are experienced.
Throughout, Abramović serves as the protagonist, dying in diverse ways opposite actor Willem Dafoe, who appeared with her in Robert Wilson’s The Life & Death of Marina Abramović. Jointly, they interpret the dramatic climaxes from Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca and Georges Bizet’s Carmen. Abramović compresses the psychodrama of the arias, fleshing out the emotional betrayals and agonies in her own theatrical microcosm. Incidentally, Abramović will turn 80 on the final day of the exhibition.
We spoke with the artist about her striking overlaps with Maria Callas, how museums need to better evolve with the needs of the public and her utterly surprising guilty pleasure.
To start with “Seven Deaths,” which came first: the scenography or the music?
First came Callas, her voice. After that, her life. She died from a broken heart. In my own life, I also almost died from a broken heart. I identify so much with her. She’s a Sagittarius. She had a really difficult childhood—like me—and also a big nose. She always was thinking that she’s too fat and tried to lose this weight, to look anorexic. In many ways, I got very angry at her, because she really had this gift—the voice—but she was willing to give up the gift and everything just for love and a normal life with [Aristotle] Onassis, who didn’t deserve any of it. So actually, these two biographies merged together.
My big idea was not to make opera. My idea was to actually make seven movies. I would have liked to have seven different directors to direct me, and I’m dying over and over with the Callas music. I approached these directors: Polanski, I had lunch with; a long conversation with Iñárritu; with Peter Weir, the Australian director—not to mention the other names. All of them had different agendas. It was impossible. It took four years of this negotiation. I had to do this all at once, and all the directors were busy on different projects. So I was losing an enormous amount of time, with no result. And then, out of the blue, completely unexpected, came the director of the Munich Opera at that time, Nikolaus Bachler. He came to Stockholm—I had a show there—just to have a conversation with me, to say opera really needs new blood. We would like to work with artists, and we would like to work with you, if you can stage and direct the Barbe-Bleue opera.” And I say, Oh my God—this is like God sent him to me! I say, You know what? I don’t give a shit about Barbe-Bleue, but I have a project for you. We finished lunch, we shook hands, and we say, okay, we are doing opera. I arrived in Munich exactly four days before the complete lockdown for COVID. To do this piece, I stayed three months, having the entire opera for me, putting this together and having tests every three days.
For the movie, Peter Weir, the Australian director, actually helped me. I was in Australia, and I love his work, and I called him, and we had a meeting in Sydney to talk about this movie. And at that time, he was in the countryside somewhere; he hurt his leg very badly, so he was in a plaster at home. He said, we can’t have the meeting, but we can have a long conversation, because I can’t move. The conversation lasted around three hours. In the end, he said, “Marina, all of us that you ask have their own stories, and this is not our story. This is your story. You have to concentrate and do it yourself.” After Australia, I came back, and I got this invitation for the Munich opera. “Seven Deaths” was born.
I decided, okay, I have to play the spirit of Callas. I can’t sing. But there is one moment [in the first film] when I’m lying in the bed and I’m looking at the photographs of my past, and everybody thinks (because we reconstructed Callas’ room to perfection, including sleeping pills, the telephone, the flowers, the bed sheets, the paintings that she had in the room) that when I opened the drawer that I’m looking at the photographs of her and Onassis. But I was looking at my marriage and my photographs. So this was really that mix of the autobiographical and her story. Now you ask me a question, so I can have another bite of breakfast.
The films throughout are about female pain and rage and heartbreak, but in the final film, there’s a gender inversion where you’re dressed like a man, and Willem Dafoe is dressed like a woman. Did you think about playing with gender in other ways?
It’s really good that you notice this. “Casta Diva” was the first song I ever heard when I was 14 on a small radio in my grandmother’s kitchen. And I just cry and say, Oh my god, I want to know everything about this voice and who is singing. I put “Casta Diva” at the end. She’s a druid queen, she falls in love with an officer; she has two children with this officer. She wanted to escape with him and betray completely her own country. But at the same time, he falls in love with her mate. She’s totally brokenhearted. She now betrayed the country. She lost the honor—there’s nothing for her to do [except] go and die in a fire. And when she’s going on this path, to the fire to burn, he’s standing with everybody else, looking at her. And in that moment, he understood how stupid he is to fall in love with the stupid mate, and how great and unbelievable this woman that he abandoned is, and falls in love with her again. But then he’s a coward. That’s why I changed the clothes. Now, he is this cowardly woman, kind of stumbling. He looks like Bette Davis on drugs, by the way. [Abramović laughs.]
Definitely.
She’s the one in male clothes, the one who actually took the courage to save her honor. The dress was so expensive: all the costumes are by Riccardo Tisci, who was working at Burberry at that time. This work has so many different lives. One is a stage version with the full orchestra: an opera setting. Another version is the installation: just one screen and all the films at the same time. In Cisternerne, the echo is unbelievable: the sound completely gives another dimension to this whole thing.
In an interlude between the films, one voiceover is a string of connected words: “intuition, premonition, feeling, hunch”… I was wondering how you balance, as an artist, intuition with control?
First of all, intuition is everything. Artists have to have intuition, even predict the future of their own work. I think that my childhood living in the Balkans and coming from this background of communism and a very religious grandmother, I actually developed lots of stuff to do with dreams, and meanings of dreams, and intuition, and inspiration. First, you have to feel it, and then you can read what it is about, but if it is not a feeling, I don’t care.
There are so many artists where you have to read lots of text in order to get the key to the work. And I really think that you can first be moved by the guts. You have to have tears in your eyes, and then you think later on about what happened to you. But intuition, inspiration and really prediction are incredibly important. If I get an idea and I like the idea, I’m not interested in doing it at all. I’m always interested when an idea is impossible or is so difficult that I am afraid of it.
If you think about Callas, this was when I was 14. I realized the piece in the 2020s during COVID. I mean, this is an enormous amount of time. Sometimes I need the piece to grow. For my Balkan erotic epic, 2005 is when I first wanted to do it, and I just developed the piece [this year]. I mean, it takes years. Walking the Great Wall in China took us eight years just to get permission. I don’t care about time. I really care that, actually, I am on the right path with my own guts and heart.
You’ve toyed extensively with risk and danger throughout your career. Where are you at today with the idea of risk?
In the beginning, when I was young, I was so interested in risk and danger and pain. But now I understand that actually, physical pain is something that I really can handle—but I can’t handle emotional pain. Emotional pain is so much more difficult, and I still haven’t found a way to do that. I don’t think I’m the only one: I think that the entirety of humanity has a problem with emotional pain. I think you grow and, getting older, you get wisdom. It doesn’t mean that I’m very wise. I’m just getting wise. I never wanted to get into all this suffering; I understand things how they are.
You’ve talked about how performance art is a young person’s game, and that many who did performance art would age out of it. Why have you had the endurance in a way that other people haven’t?
I come from Slavic mountain people. [She laughs.] People already at the end of their 70s give up performance. It was too demanding. First of all, it’s an immaterial form of art—you can’t make a living. All my life, I was teaching in order to pay my rent. The first time I was ever paid for performance was when I was 65 years old, at the MoMA, because I had to sit there for three months, and I could not work, so they had to pay me.
I never was even thinking that I could make a living out of this. And then there was the pressure of the galleries and museums to produce goods: people started making mixed media stuff, video, sculptures, and so on. But I never give up. I think one of the most revolutionary, the most difficult, and the most demanding but incredibly transformative forms of art is performance. I’m very happy that I continue; I work with young people. I teach them. I have my own institute in Greece. I want to tell the young generation of artists that the real performance we are talking about is long durational, hours and hours and months and months; it actually is transformative, not just for the public, but for the person doing it, and creates a completely new kind of dynamic and energy. The public comes because they don’t believe this is happening. They bring their friends, the friends bring their friends, and it becomes this new dynamic, which normally in a museum doesn’t happen. I just think that my entire life, till my last breath, I will dedicate to this form of art.
[She sips from her mug of tea.] I’m always drinking Yorkshire Gold. Did you ever try Yorkshire Gold?
I haven’t!
Yorkshire Gold is good.
You first attended a Venice Biennial when you were 14, and obviously you’ve had a long career there. What is your feeling about showing there today?
Venice is like being at home to me. Since I was 14, I have seen every Biennale. And also in 1995, I got a Golden Lion [ed note: 1997]. So this is like the biggest honor, and I still come because I really love the sadness, the melancholy, the drama of Venice. But right now, I’m also the first woman to show at the Accademia—like at the Royal Academy. In 265 years, I was the first woman. Now I’m here, the first woman. I’m getting this role to be the first woman everywhere, like a truck, making the road for other talented women. [She laughs again.]
This show is very particular. It’s called “Transforming Energy,” and it’s really the public doing the work. I’m giving the public the tools: the objects, the minerals, and very clear instructions, and they have to experience it themselves. There are 65 years to my career. It is not enough that you actually show and perform. The public has to take their own steps and see what they feel.
I also believe that right now, in the 21st Century, museums have to change. It’s not enough for the public just to go and look at things. The public wants to be part of something, and they want their own experiences. This is what I recognize, and I give them this opportunity.
The show was in Shanghai before, and the Chinese public was unbelievable. They did exactly as was instructed. They had headphones to block the sound; they’re in a group, but they’re alone at the same time. How are the Italians going to do all this? I will see what will happen. I don’t think they’re so structural.
You never know with Italians. Crystals and energies have become something lots of people are widely into. Have you noticed that mysticism resonates more with the public? Maybe because people are so desperate to believe in something other than the ugliness of the social-political realities?
We live in a very difficult moment of human history. It’s a mess, really a mess. So people really lost their own center, especially the spiritual center, and then technology took over, and then artificial intelligence. It’s unbelievable. Kids completely lose their own sense of intimacy and sit at the table and text rather than talk. The young generation is afraid to fall in love because they’re afraid of pain. They’re afraid of emotions. I mean, we are damaging ourselves right now because of the way we are living. So people are looking to everything—they look into every form of spirituality they can get.
But what I’m really offering is the pure energy, because the materials we are using are copper, iron, amethyst, quartz and selenite, which really historically have certain energies. I mean that they’re really conserving energy and light and knowledge. The whole motto in this show is: give me the time, and I will give you experience. If you don’t give me the time, no experience.
I remember very well a long time ago at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, I had two objects and asked the public to sit on them. There were two Americans, and one American said to another American—I just overheard the conversation—”Listen, I’m sitting here five minutes. Do you feel anything?” The other says “Nothing. Let’s go for a hamburger.” So the whole thing is, give me your time. I will give experience, but not after just five minutes.
That’s so cliché, but so funny. Let me ask you one last question.
Ask me something private that you want to know.
Do you secretly have bad habits? Like you doomscroll on Instagram? Or a habit that is almost contradictory to the themes of your work?
Oh yes, like everybody else. But I don’t have Instagram. My Institute has Instagram, but I don’t have the passwords, so someone always shows it to me. I am absolutely not on social media myself. But when I’m really overworked and tired, I love to watch Christmas movies. I love them—they’re so stupid. They always start out very complicated and always finish with a happy ending. That’s one. And then I also like series that have a lot of seasons, like 40 seasons. I found one series, but I finished it unfortunately. It’s called “The Heartland.” It’s Canadian, and it’s all about horses in the middle of nowhere. Horses get born. They die. A woman makes pie, washes the dishes. It’s 10 episodes each. So you’re living with some imaginary family with no stress.
But lately, I really recognize my addiction, and now I don’t put the computer I watch on next to my bed. I stopped that about a year ago. Now I read books. I’m reading specific things that really inspire me, so then I fall asleep with the book on my chest.
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