Italian Winemaker Ornellaia Reveals Marina Abramović's Designs

Ornellaia has enlisted Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović (b. 1946) to design the labels for its 2023 vintages, extending the Tuscan winery's long-running Vendemmia d'Artista project into new conceptual territory. The collaboration spans the standard 750ml bottle and the larger 3L, 6L, and 9L formats, each treated as a distinct work rather than a simple variation on the same image.

The smallest and most widely produced bottles carry self-portrait drawings. The 6L bottle features a self-portrait photograph. The 9L edition takes a more overtly performative approach, with a label that reads:“Marina Abramović Instructions: Slowly drink wine with eyes closed and listen to the music.” Ornellaia produces 100 bottles in the 3L size, 10 in the 6L size, and just one in the 9L format, underscoring the project's rarity even within the luxury wine market.

Several of the limited-edition bottles will be auctioned in June at Bonhams, with proceeds benefiting the Guggenheim Museum's forthcoming exhibition“Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now,” which opens in June. The pairing places Abramović's work in a familiar art-world register: the bottle becomes both object and event, a vessel for image, instruction, and ritual.

In a video accompanying the commission, Abramović said the project had to come“from my heart” and remain interactive, a principle that has shaped much of her practice. She said she began with the grape itself, then built the self-portraits from that point, allowing the image to shift toward a Medusa-like form as the fruit accumulated across her face.

The 9L bottle's musical reference reaches back to Nino Rota's theme for Federico Fellini's 1960 film“La Dolce Vita.” Abramović said she listens to Rota when she is sad because it immediately lifts her mood, calling it“the music of happiness.”

Ornellaia's technical director, Marco Balsimelli, said the 2023 vintage benefited from“the benevolence of nature,” citing a mild winter, a rainy spring, and a hot summer. Late August rain and cool September nights, he added, helped preserve acidity while deepening aromatic complexity - a balance that mirrors the project's own tension between pleasure, scarcity, and artistic intent.

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