This exhibition at AaltoSiilo (2–5 September 2026) is the result of many years of close collaboration between Marina Abramović, Adam Lowe and the team at Factum Arte, including Sol Costales and Irene Gaumé. Curated and produced by Factum Arte, specifically for AaltoSiilo, within the Oulu 2026 European Capital of Culture framework, it presents new and previously unseen works by Marina Abramović that have been evolving for some time, and reveals a deep, intuitive and poetic side of the artist.

The show is a gift to the Baltic from Marina Abramović and Factum Arte: it includes ten framed works based on the artist’s skin using innovative printing methods, a cast salt sculpture of the head of Marina Abramović that laments the Baltic becoming a brackish sea, glass tears, alongside miniatures based on iconic images from some of Abramović’s most celebrated performances. Included in the exhibition are screenings of the Seven Deaths of Maria Callas (120min, 2020), in which Marina enacts the death scenes performed by Maria Callas in seven different operas. 

SKIN

Made from photographs of Marina Abramović’s own skin, these works explore the body as both a protective surface and a site of vulnerability. The images are printed onto sheets of specially formulated latex designed to reproduce the appearance and texture of human skin. The material is first primed and painted white, before the photographic images are printed directly onto its surface using Factum’s flatbed printer.

Created for Skin, Salt and Tears at AaltoSiilo, the works respond to the particular context of Oulu and its changing climate. Skin becomes a boundary between the body and its environment: something that protects, but also exposes. The works also evoke the ancient myth of Marsyas, whose skin was removed after his musical contest with Apollo, connecting Abramović’s longstanding engagement with the body to ideas of endurance, fragility and transformation.

SALT

Salt connects the work to the changing Baltic, which is becoming increasingly brackish. Some freshwater fish can now live in the sea. The cast head in the exhibition cracked as it cooled, but the cracks revealed a fragility that Marina has celebrated. It also acquired a pinkish tone similar to the artist’s flesh colour. 

TEARS

Glass tears represent both hope and sadness: sadness for Venice, where the rising sea level is threatening the foundations on which the city is built. Abramović's exhibition 'Transforming Energy' at the Gallerie dell’Accademia (6 May – 19 October 2026) coincided with the 61st Venice Biennale and marking her 80th birthday and the first living woman artist to be honoured with a major exhibition in the institution. The tears of hope are for Oulu, where the opposite movement is taking place: as a result of post-glacial rebound, the land is rising faster than the sea level.

Marina has been focused on long-duration performance – and both cities reveal, on a different scale, a long and complex relationship between culture and nature. Venice may come to represent the past; Oulu could help shape the future as a focal point for change.

AN ADDITIONAL ELEMENT: ELECTROSTATIC

Along with these three groups of works, the exhibition will include a series of prints of a readymade phenomenon. For many years, Marina and Factum have been experimenting with electricity. As with so many works of art, the idea can find its form in surprising ways. The industrial strip lights in Factum's Madrid workshop were removed some years ago, but the traces of electrostatic charge remained where the dust had built up, forming poetic traces reminiscent of Yves Klein’s Anthropometry paintings – rather than a moment in time, these images were formed as the residue of an attraction that took place over an extended period of time.