Ulay: The Great Journey

Ulay: The Great Journey

Ulay: The Great Journey

Dates: Nov. 13, 2022 - Mar. 12, 2023

Artist: Ulay

Curator: Sherry Lai, Hana Ostan Ožbolt

Venue: HOW Art Museum (2F, No. 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road, Shanghai)

Organizer: HOW Art Museum

Co-Organizer: ULAY Foundation, SPURS Gallery

Supporter: Art Algorithm Capital

With The Great Journey, HOW Art Museum presents the first institutional posthumous exhibition of the groundbreaking oeuvre of Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay (1943–2020), in Asia. The exhibition is co-curated by Sherry Lai, partner SPURS Gallery, and Hana Ostan Ožbolt, ULAY Foundation Director.

Comprising approximately 70 works, The Great Journey emphasizes the variety and the experimental, uncompromising and intimate character of the work and the legacy of Ulay, the pioneer in Polaroid photography, performance and body art. The exhibition is a journey through Ulay's life and his body of work, focusing on three different periods: his artistic activity in the early 1970s, his collaboration with Marina Abramović between 1976 and 1989, and his work as a solo artist in the late 1990s.

Ulay had a long-lasting and personal relationship to China, that inspired a great deal of his oeuvre. The exhibition highlights various series of works, which respond to China's vastness and greatness, its landscape, culture, religion and people.

The body as a reference, as a starting point, as Ulay's medium par excellence: "As soon as I began using the Polaroid camera, mainly pointing it at myself – a practice I called Auto-Polaroid – I immediately discovered its performative elements. Taking Polaroids was a performative act for me: I performed in front of the camera". 1 In the early 70s, Ulay developed an approach that was novel in both method and subject matter, using the Polaroid camera as a tool to capture the transformations of his own body, manipulated in a myriad of ways, and investigate the subject of identity. In those fleeting, intimate performances without an audience, Ulay explored socially constructed issues of gender, his masculine and feminine sides, as well as photography's slippery identity between the real and the illusory.

From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with former partner Marina Abramović. They met in 1975, when Marina held a performance at de Appel in Amsterdam. It was the beginning of an intensely symbiotic relationship in both love and work that lasted twelve years. Ulay no longer posed questions about his own masculine and feminine sides but, joint with Abramović, strived towards unification, towards an intersex state: that of the hermaphrodite. Between 1976 and 1980, they traveled through Europe in a Citroën van, creating performances in which they explored their relationship, and in particular their physical and mental limits. These are known as theRelation Works; performances that Ulay himself described as cathartic, very realistic, minimalistic, and highly erotic. Both artists wrote a manifesto, entitled ART VITAL, to ground their work. At their core, the performances are straightforward: no theatrical effects, no props or outside interference. Seminal in their sobriety and intensity, they are today considered iconic in the history of performance art.

In 1986, Ulay and Abramović visited China for the first time. And in 1988, it was in China that they ended their relationship with the monumental work The Great Wall Walk in which they walked for ninety days towards each other from either end of the Great Wall – a journey not yet made by any Westerner. After years of negotiations with the country's authorities, the artists got permission to carry out the durational performance: Abramović started walking at the eastern end of the Wall (at Shan Hai Guan, on the shores of the Bohai Sea), walking westward. Ulay started at the western end of the Wall (at Jai Yu Guan, the south-western periphery of the Gobi Desert), walking eastward. While they both continuously walked two thousand kilometres towards each other, they documented their journey: on view are Ulay's (Polaroid) photographs of the landscape and the people he encountered, as well as his intimate diaries from that time. Inspired by the architecture of the Great Wall itself, a large aluminium gate-like sculpture, one of the artist's very seldom examples of sculptural objects, is also exhibited. Abramović and Ulay met at Er Lang Shan, in Shen Mu, Shaanxi province. The Great Wall Walk, initially intended as a confirmation of their love, marked the end of their relationship, one of the most productive and celebrated artistic partnerships of the 20th century.

After breaking with Abramović, Ulay focused on photography, exploring the medium and its boundaries (several large format Polaroids and photograms), reflecting his inner states and own existential search, addressing the position of the marginalized individual in contemporary society and re-examining the problem of nationalism with its symbols. Nevertheless, although he was working primarily in photography, he remained connected to the question of the 'performative', which resulted in his constant 'provocation' of audiences through the realization of numerous collaborative projects, performances, and workshops. In the last 10 years of his life, Ulay has been mostly engaged in projects and artistic initiatives that raise awareness and enhance understanding and appreciation of water.

The period of his late artistic activity between 2014–2017 was marked in both form and content by the colour pink (Ulay's "pink period"). It consists of a series of drawings, middle-size Polaroids and (collaborative) performances.

Ulay's life was marked by various journeys with diverse people and cultures – physical travels all around the world and spiritual explorations of different states of mind. His identity search was a life-long project, closely connected to the process of "unlearning – forgetting the values by which I had justified myself, my commitment". "What I reached was a lot more fluid and no longer as concrete. (...) I began to see that everything is in constant motion: life is change."2

[1] Ulay in an Interview with Alessandro Cassin: "Early Works: Ephermal, Intimate Actions, with No Audience, Arrested in Time through the Polaroid", pp 88-93. In: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam, 2014.

[2] Ulay in conversation with Alessandro Cassin: "Animism, Buddhism, Beckett and Cage", in: Whispers, Ulay on Ulay, pp. 226–227. in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014.

Dates: Nov. 13, 2022 - Mar. 12, 2023

Artist: Ulay

Curator: Sherry Lai, Hana Ostan Ožbolt

Venue: HOW Art Museum (2F, No. 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road, Shanghai)

Organizer: HOW Art Museum

Co-Organizer: ULAY Foundation, SPURS Gallery

Supporter: Art Algorithm Capital

With The Great Journey, HOW Art Museum presents the first institutional posthumous exhibition of the groundbreaking oeuvre of Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay (1943–2020), in Asia. The exhibition is co-curated by Sherry Lai, partner SPURS Gallery, and Hana Ostan Ožbolt, ULAY Foundation Director.

Comprising approximately 70 works, The Great Journey emphasizes the variety and the experimental, uncompromising and intimate character of the work and the legacy of Ulay, the pioneer in Polaroid photography, performance and body art. The exhibition is a journey through Ulay's life and his body of work, focusing on three different periods: his artistic activity in the early 1970s, his collaboration with Marina Abramović between 1976 and 1989, and his work as a solo artist in the late 1990s.

Ulay had a long-lasting and personal relationship to China, that inspired a great deal of his oeuvre. The exhibition highlights various series of works, which respond to China's vastness and greatness, its landscape, culture, religion and people.

The body as a reference, as a starting point, as Ulay's medium par excellence: "As soon as I began using the Polaroid camera, mainly pointing it at myself – a practice I called Auto-Polaroid – I immediately discovered its performative elements. Taking Polaroids was a performative act for me: I performed in front of the camera". 1 In the early 70s, Ulay developed an approach that was novel in both method and subject matter, using the Polaroid camera as a tool to capture the transformations of his own body, manipulated in a myriad of ways, and investigate the subject of identity. In those fleeting, intimate performances without an audience, Ulay explored socially constructed issues of gender, his masculine and feminine sides, as well as photography's slippery identity between the real and the illusory.

From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with former partner Marina Abramović. They met in 1975, when Marina held a performance at de Appel in Amsterdam. It was the beginning of an intensely symbiotic relationship in both love and work that lasted twelve years. Ulay no longer posed questions about his own masculine and feminine sides but, joint with Abramović, strived towards unification, towards an intersex state: that of the hermaphrodite. Between 1976 and 1980, they traveled through Europe in a Citroën van, creating performances in which they explored their relationship, and in particular their physical and mental limits. These are known as theRelation Works; performances that Ulay himself described as cathartic, very realistic, minimalistic, and highly erotic. Both artists wrote a manifesto, entitled ART VITAL, to ground their work. At their core, the performances are straightforward: no theatrical effects, no props or outside interference. Seminal in their sobriety and intensity, they are today considered iconic in the history of performance art.

In 1986, Ulay and Abramović visited China for the first time. And in 1988, it was in China that they ended their relationship with the monumental work The Great Wall Walk in which they walked for ninety days towards each other from either end of the Great Wall – a journey not yet made by any Westerner. After years of negotiations with the country's authorities, the artists got permission to carry out the durational performance: Abramović started walking at the eastern end of the Wall (at Shan Hai Guan, on the shores of the Bohai Sea), walking westward. Ulay started at the western end of the Wall (at Jai Yu Guan, the south-western periphery of the Gobi Desert), walking eastward. While they both continuously walked two thousand kilometres towards each other, they documented their journey: on view are Ulay's (Polaroid) photographs of the landscape and the people he encountered, as well as his intimate diaries from that time. Inspired by the architecture of the Great Wall itself, a large aluminium gate-like sculpture, one of the artist's very seldom examples of sculptural objects, is also exhibited. Abramović and Ulay met at Er Lang Shan, in Shen Mu, Shaanxi province. The Great Wall Walk, initially intended as a confirmation of their love, marked the end of their relationship, one of the most productive and celebrated artistic partnerships of the 20th century.

After breaking with Abramović, Ulay focused on photography, exploring the medium and its boundaries (several large format Polaroids and photograms), reflecting his inner states and own existential search, addressing the position of the marginalized individual in contemporary society and re-examining the problem of nationalism with its symbols. Nevertheless, although he was working primarily in photography, he remained connected to the question of the 'performative', which resulted in his constant 'provocation' of audiences through the realization of numerous collaborative projects, performances, and workshops. In the last 10 years of his life, Ulay has been mostly engaged in projects and artistic initiatives that raise awareness and enhance understanding and appreciation of water.

The period of his late artistic activity between 2014–2017 was marked in both form and content by the colour pink (Ulay's "pink period"). It consists of a series of drawings, middle-size Polaroids and (collaborative) performances.

Ulay's life was marked by various journeys with diverse people and cultures – physical travels all around the world and spiritual explorations of different states of mind. His identity search was a life-long project, closely connected to the process of "unlearning – forgetting the values by which I had justified myself, my commitment". "What I reached was a lot more fluid and no longer as concrete. (...) I began to see that everything is in constant motion: life is change."2

[1] Ulay in an Interview with Alessandro Cassin: "Early Works: Ephermal, Intimate Actions, with No Audience, Arrested in Time through the Polaroid", pp 88-93. In: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam, 2014.

[2] Ulay in conversation with Alessandro Cassin: "Animism, Buddhism, Beckett and Cage", in: Whispers, Ulay on Ulay, pp. 226–227. in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014.

Related Artists