Marina Abramovic is one of the most famous living artists of our time. A pioneer of performance art she has exhibited in some of the biggest museums in the world, collaborated with Jay Z and Lady Gaga, and even starred in an opera. Queen, Girl Boss, no title is big enough for what she has achieved in her career. But her love life has perhaps not been as successful. In the first in our series of the biggest love stories and fails in art history, we begin with the story of Marina Abramovic and Ulay.
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen), like Abramovic, is a famous performance artist and the pair first met in Amsterdam in 1976. Their relationship was both romantic and professional from the start and lasted for 12 years.
They described themselves as being “a body with two heads” and thought of themselves collectively as being “The Other.” They were so in sync they even dressed the same, and Abramovic said that they nicknamed each other “Glue.” As far as pet names go, it sure is one we’ve never heard before.
Together they created headline grabbing performances, which questioned the limits of their bodies. In Raw Energy, one of their most famous, Ulay aimed an arrow at Abramovic’s heart from a bow she was holding for 4 minutes. The tiniest move could have released the arrow directly into her heart and killed her. It was supposed to show the idea of interdependence in a couple, pushing the concept of trust to the extreme.
In other performances they ran into each other repeatedly, tied their hair together for hours on end, and in one piece – Breathing In/Breathing Out – they connected their mouths together for 19 minutes until they both ran out of oxygen. Toxic? Maybe. All we can say is that their relationship sure sounds like the definition of intensity.
Even their break-up was a performance. They decided to end their relationship symbolically in a work they called Lovers in 1988. It actually took them eight years to get permission from the Chinese government to perform the work. At this point, their relationship had completely ended, but they decided to go ahead anyway. So, after each walking 2,500 km of The Great Wall of China, they met in the middle and said goodbye, taking the idea of conscious uncoupling to a whole other level.
More than a decade later, in 2010, during Abramovic’s performance of The Artist is Present at MoMA, Ulay turned up. During the performance Abramovic sat in silence with every stranger who took a seat in front of her. When Ulay decided to turn up, Abramovic took his hands and started crying. The video of this moment went viral, showing that feelings between the former lovers were still there.
That said, the seeming everlasting love and respect between the pair may have been short-lived. In 2015 Ulay took Abramovic to court for not paying sufficient royalties for their joint works. In 2016 Abramovic was ordered to pay Ulay €250,000, as well as Ulay’s legal costs. And while money talks, they seemed to have made peace by 2018 as they announced they were working on a memoir together.
After the end of their relationship, Abramovic became a global sensation in a way that Ulay never could. He died in March 2020 from lymphatic cancer. On Instagram, Abramovic said: “It is with great sadness I learned about my friend and former partner Ulay’s death today. He was an exceptional artist and human being, who will be deeply missed. On this day, it is comforting to know that his art and legacy will live on forever. Their love story – though short-lived and ill-fated – is one of the most famed relationships in modern art history.
