Ulay

Ulay (1943, Solingen – 2020, Ljubljana), born Frank Uwe Laysiepen, was one of Europe’s most important performance artists. After completing an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer, he studied photography from 1962 to 1968 and began experimenting with visual poetry and Polaroid photography in the 1970s. He moved to Amsterdam in 1968, where he photographed people on the margins of society, such as transvestites, drug addicts, and homeless people. From 1970 onwards, Ulay developed decidedly performative photographs: he staged his own body in front of the camera and showed gender identity as fluid, the self as multiple, and the body as anagrammatic. At the same time, he also explored the transience of the medium of photography and staged it as a processual and performative act.

In 1976, Ulay caused a sensation with his art action »There is a Criminal Touch to Art.« He stole the painting »The Poor Poet« by Carl Spitzweg from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and hung it in the apartment of a Turkish guest worker family. He later returned the painting, turned himself in to the police, and was arrested. The action not only drew attention to the contradictions between the ideals of the art world and socio-economic realities, but also shaped the debate about the relationship between artistic freedom and criminality for many years.

From 1976 to 1988, Ulay collaborated with his then-partner Marina Abramović to create groundbreaking performances that explored the physical limits of the body, extreme states of consciousness, and artistic identity. They addressed traumatic experiences in relationships and relationality, particularly between men and women. 

From 1998 to 2004, Ulay was professor of performance at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

In addition to photographs and video documents of performances in the ZKM | Collection, sixteen videos by the artist have also been in the archive of ZKM since 2020.