Ulay facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ulay
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Ulay in 1972
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| Born |
Frank Uwe Laysiepen
30 November 1943 |
| Died | 2 March 2020 (aged 76) |
| Nationality | German |
| Known for | Performance art |
Frank Uwe Laysiepen (born November 30, 1943 – died March 2, 2020), known as Ulay, was a German artist. He lived in Amsterdam and Ljubljana. Ulay became famous for his Polaroid photographs and his performance art. He often worked with his partner, Marina Abramović.
Contents
Ulay's Early Art Journey
In the early 1970s, Ulay moved to Amsterdam. There, he started to experiment with Polaroid cameras. He created a series of art pieces called Renais sense in 1974. These were collages that showed different sides of himself.
Working with Marina Abramović
In 1975, Ulay met Marina Abramović, an artist from Serbia. They started living and creating art together that same year. They explored ideas about who they were as artists. They called their joint art "relation works." These works were always changing and moving.
Ulay and Marina wanted to combine their artistic selves. They called this new combined self "The Other." They often dressed like twins and built a strong trust between them. This helped them explore what it meant to be an artist.
Their art tested the limits of the human body. They looked at male and female ideas, and how people communicate without words. They also explored deep states of mind. Marina said their goal was to combine their artistic selves into one.
Here are some of their famous "relation works":
- In Relation in Space (1976), they ran into each other for an hour. This showed how their energies mixed.
- Relation in Movement (1977) involved them driving a car inside a museum for 365 laps. A black liquid from the car formed a sculpture.
- For Relation in Time (1977), they sat back to back, tied together by their hair, for sixteen hours. They then let people watch to see if the audience's energy could help them go even longer.
- In Breathing In/Breathing Out, they connected their mouths and breathed each other's air. After seventeen minutes, they both passed out because they ran out of oxygen.
- In AAA-AAA (1978), they stood facing each other and made loud sounds. They slowly moved closer until they were yelling into each other's mouths. This piece showed their focus on how long they could endure.
- In 1980, they performed Rest Energy. They balanced each other with a bow and arrow pointed at Marina's heart. This showed how much they trusted each other.
Between 1981 and 1987, they performed Nightsea Crossing many times. They sat silently across from each other for seven hours a day.
The End of a Partnership
In 1988, Ulay and Marina decided to end their relationship. They did this with a special art piece called Lovers. They each walked along the Great Wall of China from opposite ends. They walked for 2500 kilometers each and met in the middle to say goodbye. Marina said this walk was a very personal and dramatic way to end their time together. It took them eight years to get permission from the Chinese government to do this. By the time they got permission, their relationship had already ended.
Years later, in 2010, Marina Abramović had a big art show at the MoMA. She performed a piece called The Artist Is Present. In this piece, she sat silently across from strangers. When Ulay came and sat in front of her, they had a very emotional reunion. A video of this moment became very popular online.
In 2015, Ulay sued Marina Abramović. He said she had not paid him enough money from their joint art sales. In 2016, a Dutch court ordered Marina to pay Ulay over €250,000. The court also said that their joint works should be credited as "Ulay/Abramović" for works from 1976 to 1980, and "Abramović/Ulay" for works from 1981 to 1988.
Ulay's Later Artworks
Ulay also created art where the audience could take part. His works Can’t Beat the Feeling: Long Playing Record (1991–1992) and Bread and Butter (1993) were about the expansion of the European Union. In his Berlin Afterimages – EU Flags series, he used how your eyes see afterimages to show flags of EU countries.
He also created The Delusion: An Event about Art and Psychiatry (2002) at a psychiatric institute in the Netherlands. Other projects that involved the audience were Luxembourg Portraits and A Monument for the Future.
Ulay also focused on showing reality as accurately as possible in works like Cursive and Radicals (2000) and Johnny–The Ontological in the Photographic Image (2004). He worked with the AoRTa art center in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova, on a piece called WE Emerge (2004).
Ulay's Personal Life
Ulay was in a relationship with Marina Abramović from 1976 to 1988. They created many performance art pieces together.
In 2013, a movie called Project Cancer: Ulay's journal from November to November was made about his life. It showed his art, his friends, and his fight with cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2011. He got better from the cancer in 2014.
Ulay passed away on March 2, 2020, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was 76 years old. His cancer had returned.
Awards and Recognition
- 1984: The San Sebastian Video Award
- 1985: The Lucano Video Award
- 1986: The Polaroid Video Award
- 1986: Video Award – Kulturkreis im Verband der Deutschen Industrie
Images for kids
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Ulay in 1972
See also
In Spanish: Ulay para niños
