'I was 28 and wanted to die for art, wanted to show the public can really kill you'

Ahead of her new erotic spectacle that taps into her Balkan heritage, Marina Abramovic speaks with Annabel Nugent about creating art from the soul, tabloids and dying for real

- Annabel Nugent

When I first meet Marina Abramovic, she is busy cajoling a man into modelling an apron. “Please,” she coos. Her entreaties work and he gives in, wrapping the garment's ties around his waist to show off the front of it, which is covered in rudimentary drawings of penises. Dozens of them. Abramovic laughs, taking girlish delight in the phallic doodles, and looks at me: “What do you think?”

I've come to Manchester, where Abramovic is staging her latest exhibition, overly prepared with pages of questions. At 78, she is a formidable pop-culture presence, a pioneering performance artist whose works are considered to be among the most important of the 20th century. But now the first question is lobbed at me, what do I think of this apron of dicks? It's a turn of events I haven't prepared for. Although maybe I should've.

Abramovic has made a career of asking tricky questions. Since the Seventies, her work has pushed the limits of body and mind, as she has sat still in a gallery for months on end, slammed her body repeatedly into a pillar, and laid down inside the blazing frame of a wooden star to the point of asphyxiation. Of herself, she asks, 'How far can I go? How much can I take?' So as questions go, the penis apron thing is an easy one to answer: “It's the perfect Christmas gift!”

It's part of a range of merchandise sold in promotion of Balkan Erotic Epic, Abramovic's latest and largest-scale performance work, being staged this month in Manchester. “I totally reject the label 'feminist' - but this?” She grins a red lipstick smile, holding up a T-shirt that features a bare-chested woman riding a giant phallus like a rocket ship. “This is pretty feminist.”

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