MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ COVERS NOWNESS PAPER ISSUE 28

Marina Abramović turns 80 on November 30, 2026, and the year leading there has been built out of scale: a Venice show that fills both the permanent galleries and the temporary spaces of the Gallerie dell'Accademia through October 18, a four hour performance with 50 bodies booked into the Park Avenue Armory from December 8 to 20, five nights at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele starting October 13. The cover of NOWNESS Paper Issue 28, released in the first days of October 2026, is the smallest thing she has done all year. Photographer Mengyu shot her sitting in her own apartment in New York's West Village, and the subject she chose was not the work. It was fear.

The loudest year of a career spent on duration gets its quietest image, made with nowness.china by a magazine majority owned since 2017 by a joint venture led by a Chinese publisher, for an artist who walked the Great Wall in 1988.

"Love is everything to me. I could not do my work if I don't love what I'm doing. When you really deeply love, you're immediately afraid that you're going to lose it. So this goes together," Abramović says in the NOWNESS release that accompanies the cover and its Private View film.

Venice Closes October 18, Berlin Opens October 13

Transforming Energy at the Gallerie dell'Accademia runs from May 6 to October 18, 2026, curated by Shai Baitel, artistic director of the Modern Art Museum Shanghai. The museum calls the show's spread across both its permanent collection galleries and its temporary exhibition spaces an absolute first in the institution's history, and Surface reported it as the Accademia's first dedicated exhibition for a living woman.

Inside are Pietà (with Ulay) from 1983 beside Titian's unfinished Pietà, Rhythm 0 from 1974, Imponderabilia from 1977 and Balkan Baroque from 1997, the Golden Lion winner at that year's Biennale. No telephones are permitted, headphones block the ambient sound and she wants visitors to stay at least three hours. "You give me your time, I give you experience," she told Louisa Buck of The Art Newspaper on May 5, 2026.

Five days before Venice closes, the stage version of Balkan Erotic Epic opens at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, October 13 to 17, 2026, at 19:30 each night, its first run in Germany. New York's museum season already runs on the same durational logic. Taryn Simon's 42 chapter Guggenheim show opened September 18 and holds the rotunda through March 14, 2027, with visitors choosing their own route through it.

Fifty Performers, Four Hours, Phones in Pouches

Park Avenue Armory presents the North American premiere of Balkan Erotic Epic from December 8 to 20, 2026, with 50 performers, a four hour running time, general admission and an audience encouraged to move freely through the space. The Manchester premiere at Aviva Studios, October 9 to 19, 2025, used over 70 performers across 13 scenes, commissioned and produced by Factory International with Park Avenue Armory and Berliner Festspiele among seven co commissioners.

A daytime installation of the set, the sculptures and the film works runs December 9 to 19, Tuesday to Saturday from 12pm to 4pm, with an 18 plus age limit and mobile phones secured in lockable pouches. "Balkan Erotic Epic is the most ambitious work in my career," she says on Factory International's page for the work.

The pattern across the city is raw material on public view. Arthur Jafa's more than 200 three ring binders went on display at the New Museum on September 24, the sorting process shown beside the finished cut, through January 4, 2027. Jafa is showing the archive. Abramović is showing the body. The magazine cover is the still frame between those two.

A West Village Apartment, One Chinese Publisher, a Film Crew

NOWNESS launched in 2010 under Jefferson Hack as a brand of LVMH, and in May 2017 Modern Dazed, the joint venture between Chinese publisher Modern Media and Dazed Media, acquired a majority stake. That ownership is the reason a New York apartment shoot of a Belgrade born artist carries a nowness.china cocreation credit.

The credit list on the package runs past a dozen roles. Mengyu photographed, Delaney Chieyen Holton interviewed, Zenglin edited the feature, Lawrence Xiao executive produced, Qian Tang produced, Madison Gu assisted on styling, Yiran Chen recorded sound and Yizheng Li handled graphic design. That is a film crew, and the print cover is the face of a Private View film that lives on NOWNESS.

Acne Paper Issue 21 arrived in June 2026 as pink pop up libraries opened at once in London, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and New York, a magazine built as an event around a print object. Issue 28 of NOWNESS Paper does the inverse, a film built around a print cover, and the subject of both is the same: a sitter who is the artwork.

She Took the Train to Venice at 14

Abramović was born in Belgrade on November 30, 1946, and first visited the Venice Biennale at 14, travelling by train from Belgrade. "To return now, after so many decades of relationship with the city, with this exhibition, feels like closing a circle," she told Surface's Hollie McLaughlin Martin in a piece published May 8, 2026.

"Transforming Energy is incredibly important for me; it is my legacy," she told Buck, after saying her work is now focused on a young generation of spectators. That is a 79 year old talking about who inherits the room.

The calendar does the rest. Venice closes on October 18, the Armory opens on December 8, and the birthday sits between them on November 30. Venice and the Armory ask the public for hours and take their phones. The NOWNESS cover asked her for one sentence at home, and the sentence she gave was that deep love and the fear of losing it arrive together.