“You were not just another visitor. You were my life.” Performance artists and former couple Marina Abramovic and Ulay share their thoughts on the historic moment in MoMA when the two met after many years of separation.
Marina Abramovic had a retrospective exhibition, “The Artist is Present,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York back in 2010, which later turned into a documentary with the same name. During a performance, her former partner in art and life, Ulay, turned up and the emotional meeting between the two became a viral sensation. The clip showing the couple reuniting has more than 20 million views on YouTube. And there is a simple explanation for the clip’s reaction: “It’s so human. Everybody has love and separation.”
“It’s been great, it’s difficult, it’s been hell, it’s been love, it’s been hate, it’s been everything. But I never forgot that moment in MoMA when I broke my rules, and I never break my rules, ever, ever, ever,” Marina Abramovic explains, and Ulay elaborates: “There was no concept for it. There was no preparation. There was no rehearsal. There was no predicted end.”
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, b.1943 – d.2020) is a German artist, who was based in Amsterdam, Holland, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ulay received international recognition for his work as a photographer, mainly in Polaroid, from the late 1960s, and later as a performance artist, including his collaborative performances with Marina Abramović from 1976 to 1988. His work has continuously dealt with politics, identity, and gender. In 2016 Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, held the first major retrospective show of his work ‘Ulay Life-Sized.’ In 2020 the Stedelijk Museum held the largest-ever, and first international post-humous, retrospective exhibition of his work ‘Ulay Was Here.’
Marina Abramović (b. 1946) was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, and is now based in New York. She began her work as a performance artist in the early 1970s and is now regarded as one of the most important artists in the field. Her work explores the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Her retrospective ‘The Artist is Present’ at MoMA, New York, in 2010 gave her a wide international breakthrough. In 2017 the retrospective exhibition ‘The Cleaner’ was shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, among other places in Europe. Marina Abramović is set to have a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, the first-ever UK exhibition spanning her life’s work.
Marina Abramović and Ulay were interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg in upstate New York at Marina Abramović’s home over ten days in August 2018 for the film ‘No Predicted End.’
Directed, edited, and produced by Kasper Bech Dyg
Camera: Jakob Solbakken
Additional Camera: Kasper Bech Dyg
Music: Simon Dokkedal
Sound Mix: Torsten Larsen
Colour Grading: Klaus Elmer
Graphic Design: Louisiana Design Studio
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling and Fritz Hansen.
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