Catalogue: ART VITAL—12 Years of Ulay/Marina Abramović

Under the title ART VITAL, which echoes the name of their joint manifesto, the exhibition project at Ljubljana’s Cukrarna Gallery examines the twelve-year collaboration between two pioneering figures of performance art through an exhibition, a photobook, and a comprehensive catalogue.

Opening on November 30, 2025, at Cukrarna Gallery, the exhibition presents a survey of Abramović and Ulay’s collaborative practice through video, photographs and archival material, as well as material remains from their performances. It includes an extensive selection of drawings, sketches, correspondence, photographs, and previously unseen documents from the Marina Abramović Archives in New York State, USA, and from the ULAY Foundation archives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where Ulay spent the final eleven years of his life.

The accompanying catalogue, now available for preorder, features scholarly essays and extensive documentation of their works. It includes a detailed archival section and descriptions of performances that have entered the canon of 20th-century art, offering a glimpse behind the scenes of history in the making and a critical insight into Abramović and Ulay’s shared artistic practice, their radical ethos, and their political and aesthetic engagement.

The catalogue brings together a series of newly commissioned essays that offer critical and historical perspectives on the collaborative practice of Marina Abramović and Ulay, tracing its aesthetic, ethical, and political implications across two decades of work. It opens with a text by Alenka Gregorič, who investigates how archival materials function as entry points into Abramović and Ulay’s artistic process. She analyses audience reception, the mediating role of photography, and the participatory dimension of their performances, how scores enable re-performance, and how personal narratives inform the interpretation of their work.

Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein follows with a critical reading of the performative as both artistic strategy and epistemological framework. Through the concept of the line as an orienting force between bodies, space, and consciousness, she traces the formation of shared authorship, the emergence of a “third energy”, and an ethics of the in-between.

Elisabeth von Samsonow situates the duo’s collaboration within a spiritually and materially grounded consciousness, revealing how their nomadic existence manifests a radical form of presence in which body, environment, and time enter into immediate relation.

Amelia Jones deepens this discussion by examining Ulay’s ethical understanding of art as a lived, relational practice rooted in interconnectedness and social engagement, where artistic and existential boundaries dissolve.

Bojana Kunst turns to the precariousness of their shared life, framing intimacy and vulnerability as the generative conditions of their collaboration. From this interplay of proximity and distance arises an existential aesthetics of everyday life.

Suzana Milevska’s analysis of Imponderabilia (1977) reconsiders the work as a radical intervention into institutional and social boundaries, foregrounding the co-presence of artist and audience, while questioning its omission from the discourse of institutional critique.

Diedrich Diederichsen concludes this section with a study of dyadic artistic partnerships, positioning Abramović and Ulay’s relationship as a dynamic artwork that disrupts aesthetic categories and opens new political and conceptual spaces.

The second chapter gathers five additional essays by scholars and curators who have either worked closely with Abramović and Ulay or conducted in-depth research on their practice. Sabine Priglinger’s essay is an analysis of The Brink (1979), which she identifies as a transformative moment in their shared practice. The piece marks the turn from kinetic impact to pared-down duration. She focuses on time as a relational force that delegated the course of their performances.

Michael Klein contributes a personal perspective shaped by his long-standing proximity to the artists. His reflection traces the productive tensions within their working relationship and shows how these left traces far beyond their oeuvre, influencing contemporary art at large.

Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas focuses on a key phase in the 1980s, when silence, meditation, and concentration move to the foreground. Large-format Polaroids accompany this period of work and evoke a symbolically charged visual language that ritualises themes of closeness, difference, and separation.

Matthieu Lelièvre turns his gaze to the fleeting legacy of performance art and outlines the museological challenges posed by the medium’s inherent non-reproducibility. The tension between document, memory, and the living moment becomes a central concern of curatorial practice.

Kurt Kladler approaches The Lovers (1988), the duo’s final major joint work, primally through Ulay’s extensive diary entries. His analysis explores the cultural and emotional resonance of a piece that is deeply embedded in the collective memory.

The archival section features two texts that underscore the significance of archives – their impact, their openness, and their role for artists, audiences and the artefacts themselves. Gregorič examines curatorial ethics and interpretative responsibility in presenting archival materials, while Thun-Hohenstein conceives the archive as an open, performative field where trace, fragment, and touch act not as residues of memory but as gestures of continual activation.

The catalogue will be published on November 30, 2025. The English-language edition will be available at Cukrarna Gallery and through the online store. Pre-orders can be placed via email at shop@mgml.si.