Marina Abramović’s shocking Rhythm 0 performance shows why we still cannot trust people in power

This article is more than 8 months old

In 1974, Marina Abramović dared an audience to use chains, lipstick and knives on her body – and their willingness to abuse her revealed frightening truths about misogyny

Katy Hesse

Monday 25 September 2025

If you walk into the Royal Academy in London today, you’ll be confronted by a table. Set up like an altar, and draped in a white cloth, it has on it 69 objects. Some are associated with pleasure – a glass, a candle, a rose, a hairbrush, a mirror, a comb, a lipstick. Others administer pain – a gun, a bullet, chains, an axe, a saw, an array of sharp knives.