Artist explains why performance where women show vaginas to the sky and men hump grass will be ‘hell’ for audiences

A world-famous conceptual artist has revealed why her new erotic epic could be 'hell' for some audiences.

You might know Marina Abramović as the GOAT of performance art, shooting to fame for her work in body art, endurance art (including pain) and the limits of the body since her first show in Edinburgh in 1973, where she threw knives in between her splayed fingers.

The Serbian artist is also well known for her rather risqué shows that explore the relationship between the performer and the audience, like when she invited spectators to do anything to her body, while in another performance, she masturbated to the point of achieving nine orgasms.

Now, the 78-year-old has taken to the stage to bring her 'Balkan Erotic Epic' to life, which she called her 'most ambitious work' yet.

According to Factory International, where the show was held last month in Manchester, UK, the performance aimed to 'explore the eroticism, spirituality and traditions of Abramović’s homeland through 13 visceral scenes', with audiences being encouraged to 'choose their own path', as 'pop-up encounters punctuating the action, bringing bodies together in dance, song and ritual.'

The piece hit the stage in Manchester, UK, last month (Marina Abramović/Factory International)

Scenes included in the art show include 'Scaring the Gods', 'Fertility Rite' and 'Massaging the Breast', which I'm sure you can imagine what that involved.

However, if that's not all, a new review in Vogue has given us a sneak peek into what really went down in the four-hour show that boasted a whopping 70 performers.

There were 'wails, chants, music, and the sounds of stamping feet', the columnist wrote, as the show explored Abramovic's home region, nature, trauma and the rituals of marriage, sex, death and religion that felt 'viscerally relevant to women.'

Sarah Mower writes the audience came 'face-to-face with macabre and surreal enactments,' including women 'throwing up their skirts and screaming as they show their vaginas to the sky [and] men lying face-down, humping grass.'

Now, the artist herself has revealed why she thought her show could be 'hell' for a particular audience.

Speaking to the outlet, Abramovic said: "It’s really pagan rituals from the fourth century to the 11th century, when Albanian, Bulgarian, Turkish, and Serbian people used vaginas and phalluses for agriculture.

Marina Abramović's art often provokes the audience (Dave Benett/Getty Images)

"If there was heavy rain and crops were threatened in the village, women would go out in the fields and scare the gods to stop by showing them their vaginas."

While choosing to stage her show in the UK last month, the artist confessed: "I think it’s going to be hell with the British, because they’re not used to nudity.

"In our days now, with our kind of way of looking at the naked body, we see everything as pornography. But I found in this poetry.”

In a previous interview with The Guardian, the artist said the performance also gave her the chance to revisit her Slavic roots and examine 'ancient rituals and deal with sexuality in relation to the universe and the unanswered questions of our existence.'

"Through this project I would like to show poetry, desperation, pain, hope, suffering and reflect our own mortality," she added.