Farewell to Ulay, historical exponent of Performance Art and longtime companion of Marina Abramović

Artist Ulay, one of the most important exponents of Performance art in the 1970s, and best known for his works together with Marina Abramović, with whom he had an affair between 1976 and 1988, passed away tonight in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Slovenian press reported the news. Ulay, a pseudonym for Frank Uwe Laysiepen, was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1943 and had been ill for some time.

After his beginnings as a photographer in the Netherlands, where he had moved leaving Germany, he had approached Performance art in the mid-1970s: the turning point came in 1976 when he met Abramović, and made numerous performances with her focusing mainly on the use of the body as a means of expression and a work of art. These are the so-called Relation works: among them, some celebrated works such as AAA-AAA (where the two shouted in each other’s faces), Imponderabilia (the very famous performance presented in Bologna in 1977, where the two artists stood naked in front of each other at the entrance of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna), Relation in Time (also presented in Bologna, it saw the couple sitting back to back with their hair tied up), Breathing in / Breathing out (a work during which the two shared their breaths until they fainted), ending with The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk, the 1988 performance that determined their separation (Marina and Ulay walked the Great Wall of China, each starting at the opposite end from the other, to meet and say goodbye at the center of the monument).

After separating from Abramović, Ulay worked mainly as a photographer (one recalls in particular the Polagram series, a series of Polaroids made between 1990 and 1993), but he often organized performances with public involvement. From 1999 to 2004, he also taught at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, and had moved to Ljubljana since 2009. Recent works include Earth Water Catalogue, a collection of his works with water as their theme, and Anagrammatic Bodies, a series of collages exploring the theme of gender identity. In 2016, the Ljubljana Civic Gallery had organized an exhibition of his work, titled Jaz Drugi (“I am the Others”), his largest retrospective held in the country and one of his most important exhibitions in general. Ulay’s last performance, titled Performing light, had been held on January 9, 2019 at the Richard Saltoun Gallery in London.

His awards include the San Sebastian Video Award (1984), the Lucano Video Award (1985), the Polaroid Video Award (1986), and the International Celebration of Lives Award at the 2014 Biografilm Festival in Bologna. His works can be found at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, MoMA in New York, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Kunstmuseum in Bern.

Pictured: Ulay in the 1970s.

Farewell to Ulay, historical exponent of Performance Art and longtime companion of Marina Abramović

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