Ulay

(Solingen, Germany, 11/30/1943 - 3/2/2020, Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Europe, German

Ulay (F. Uwe Laysiepen) was born in 1943 in Solingen, Germany. After fulfilling an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer he began to study photography. He worked in the fields of experimental photography, film, performance and environmental art until 1975.

He met Marina Abramovic in Amsterdam in 1976 and began living and working together. They initiated their collaboration with Relation Work, a series of ritualistic performances investigating male and female energies, mental and physical endurance and identity. From 1981 to 1986, they presented Nightsea Crossing, a performance of motionless meditation, in ninety sites around the world. In 1988, as their final artistic collaboration, they completed a walk along the Great Wall of China, meeting in the middle, they said goodbye to one another and have since pursued individual artistic projects.

Ulay had been a professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe.

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