ULAY

(November 30, 1943–March 2, 2020)

ULAY, a legendary artist, the pioneer of Polaroid photography and performance art.

It is hard to grasp the variety of his oeuvre and the complexity of his artistic expression, which is not solely photographic/performative / at the intersection of both, but much more. ULAY’s poetics – no matter the medium – is best defined by a set of verbs, which together describe a coherent and intense artistic statement: exploring his own relationship with himself through exploring relationships with others (I – Other), upsetting conventions, breaking the rules, undermining beliefs, fighting against prejudices, confronting with unwanted truths, pushing limits, enduring pain, protesting against injustice.[1] 

“My oeuvre is so bizarre.” ULAY said in his last printed interview in 2019. “I jump. I’m not a linear, consistent, producing artist. Most artists, once their handwriting is recognized, they stick to it. For the public, for critics and collectors, and the market, that is much easier, more convenient. My ambition is almost the opposite: each time I do something new, I choose different motives, different techniques, different dimensions and so on. That can be very confusing, but I like to have joy too. So, if my oeuvre were consistent and linear, that would be boring for me. I like to work for myself as much as for others. And once it is done, I let it go. Doing it a second time is not my thing. I like to do things once. Another tricky thing: I don’t let it go; I hide it. I’m a hideaway artist. I have done so many things that people don’t know about – they can’t know because they don’t have access to my archive. Yes, I’m a hideaway artist, not an escape artist, unless you think that to hide oneself away means the same as to escape.” [2]

Born as Frank Uwe Laysiepen on November 30, 1943, in Solingen, Germany, ULAY had left Germany at the end of the 1960s and went to Amsterdam, where he joined a Dutch anarchist movement, the Provos. As a Polaroid International Amsterdam consultant, he had unlimited access to film and cameras; he travelled to London, Paris, Rome, and New York and began experimanting with art photography. “One can learn many things in life, but not art. The madness you need – the must which is shaking you all the time. You are an artist, even when you are asleep. Because of the must.”

In the early period of his artistic activity (1968–1976), ULAY undertook a thematic search to understand the notions of identity and the body on both the personal and communal levels, mainly through series of aphorisms, Polaroid photographs, and intimate performances. He introduced the term “performative photography”. “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. These were intimate actions, carried out in the absence of a live audience, ephemeral in nature, yet arrested in time through the Polaroid.” [3] Taking hundreds of self-portraits, each manipulated in a myriad of ways (f. e. S’heSoliloquy, White MaskElfTraumatic Fears from the Renais sense series, cca 1972–75), ULAY developed an approach that was novel in both method and subject matter, using the camera as a tool to investigate and modify identity, whilst exploring socially constructed issues of gender. “It is impossible to talk about Ulay without talking about Polaroid. Vice versa; it is not possible to talk about Polaroid without referring to the work of Ulay either.” [4]

Ulay’s photographic approach was becoming increasingly performative. It resulted in a series of five Fototot (“photo-death”) performances in 1975/76, which questioned the idea of the audience and showed the transient, ever-changing nature of photographic identity, even more so: “I wanted to demonstratively bury photography”.[5] Later, performative tendencies within the medium of photography were transformed entirely into the medium of performance. ULAY’s previous solo work before the collaboration period with Abramović was the today iconic action in 14 predetermined steps, Irritation – There Is a Criminal Touch to Art (1976) that took place in Berlin, a city, towards which Ulay always had “conflictual” feelings (as well as to Germany). “In many ways, I tried to de-Germanize myself, but each time I have been in Berlin, I have felt the weight of its history – a tragic history – very heavily. And yes, working there has always had a very particular meaning for me”.[6] ULAY stole the renowned Carl Spitzweg’s painting “The Poor Poet” from the Neue National Galerie in Berlin and relocated it to Kreuzberg, hanging it on the wall in a Turkish family’s living room. The carefully planned action developed from “an urge to act”, to respond to the current (social / political / ethnic / also artistic) situation in the city. [7] 

From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with former partner Marina Abramović. Their 12-year relationship was turbulent and fraught, but it was one of the most productive and celebrated artistic partnerships of the 20th century. Together, they broke new ground with their pioneering performance art, propelling each other into new, evermore extreme and unexplored realms of emotional discomfort and physical endurance; testing the capabilities of the body and the spirit, questioning perceived masculine and feminine traits. Living and working together, they committed to each other, as expressed in the Relation Work’s “Art Vital” manifesto: “Art Vital: No fixed living place, permanent movement, direct contact, local relation, self-selection, passing limitations, taking risks, mobile energy”. Through their performances, they became indisputable icons of performance art. 

After breaking with Abramović, Ulay focused on photography, addressing the position of the marginalized individual in contemporary society (series Can’t Beat the Feeling – Long Playing Record, 1992 including a series of portraits of New York Afro-American judges and homeless; Aboriginal Afterimages, 1997; Luxembourg Portraits II, 1997) and re-examining the problem of nationalism and its symbols (Berlin Afterimages, 1994–1995). 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, workshops, and lecture-performances (among others, Lichaamstaal, a special project for the Boumanhuis Detoxification Center, Dordrecht, NL, 1998; A Monument for the Future, 2000; Portraits of Ethnics, Amsterdam, NL, 2000; 7 in a Boat, Sakushima Island, JAP, 2000; I am Other. The Delusion: An Event About Art and Psychiatry, Vincent Van Gogh Psychiatric Institute, Venray, NL, 2002; WE Emerge, realized at AoRTA Art Centre, Chișinău, Moldova, 2004). In recent years, Ulay has been mostly engaged in projects and artistic initiatives that raise awareness and enhance understanding and appreciation of – and respect for – water (WATERTOALL, 2004; Waterfonie, 2009; Whose Water Is It?, 2012; Sweet Water Salt Water, 2012; Water Cards, 2012 – ongoing; ). Comparing Ulay’s photography works with a strong social agenda with recent projects on the subject of water revels the issue of the image processor the elusiveness of the images, which Ulay ‘reduces exclusively’ to the process.[8] “To infuse a different understanding of the conditio humana and the humanitarian project, which, to me, was always very important. If one wants to bring change to society and art, then one should use different tools and aim also in the direction of our social fabric.” [9]

After four decades of living and working in Amsterdam, and undertaking several long-term artistic projects in India, Australia, and China, and a professorship of Performance and New Media Art at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe in Germany, Ulay spent the last years of his life with his wife, family and friends, based in Ljubljana and between Ljubljana and Amsterdam. 

[1] More: Maria Rus Bojan, “Breaking the Norms: Poetics of Provocation”, in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014. 

[2] Ulay in an interview with Dominic Johnson, Art Monthly, January 2019.

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

[4] Frits Gierstberg, “Ulay's Second Skin”, in: What is This thing called Polaroid? (by Frits Gierstberg and Katrin Pietsch), Nederlands Fotomuseum / Valiz Foundation, Rotterdam, 2016. 

[5] Ulay in an Interview with Alessandro Cassin, “Taking Authority Away From Photography”, in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014.

[6] Ulay in an Interview with Alessandro Cassin, “Berlin: There is a Criminal Touch to Art”, in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014.

[7] More on the work: Ulay. Der Erste Act / The First Act (by Thomas McEvilley), Cantz, 1994.

[8] Tevž Logar, “A Misfit and Up to His Neck in Water”, in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014. 

 [9] Ulay in an interview with Alessandro Cassin, “Peace Warrior”, in: Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Cassin, ed. Astrid Vorstermans), Valiz Foundation, Amsterdam 2014. 

 



Ulay, S'he, 1973-74

Ulay, S'he, 1973-74

Ulay / Marina Abramović, Relation in Time, 1977

Ulay / Marina Abramović, Relation in Time, 1977

Ulay, S'he, 1973

Ulay, S'he, 1973

Ulay’s work is featured in the collections of major art institutions around the world, such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Tate London, Kunstmuseum Bern, Stedelijk Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

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