On March 2, local time, according to the Italian media and his own Facebook page announced, the world-famous performance artist Uwe Laysiepen (Uwe Laysiepen, abbreviation: Ulay Ulay) died in his sleep at the age of 76. Ouray has lived as a couple with the artist Marina Abramović, known as the "Mother of Performance Art", and has created a large number of works of art with great depth and intensity, and their love-hate relationship has been called one of the most discussed and famous love stories in art history. In 2011, Ulay was confirmed to have cancer and subsequently made an active recovery and began his last experiment on the body, The Cancer Project.
▲ Artist Ulay
An artist should not fall in love with another artist
Marina Abramović, the "godmother of performance art," once said: "An artist should not fall in love with another artist". However, on her 29th birthday in 1975, at the airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Marina met Ulay (formerly known as Uwe Rispan, Frank Uwe Laysiepen), a performance artist from West Germany, who was born on the same day of the same month. Love has contributed to the two people's combined performance, but also brought them career peaks.
▲ Marina Abramovich and Ouray
Ulay has long hair, and his encounters are more lonely and tragic than Marina's, his father died in the war, and his mother went mad because of the war. The lonely, melancholy, silent Ulay captivated Marina. They fell in love with each other in cooperation and together, and soon Marina returned to Belgrade to divorce her husband and begin a life of working with Ouray on performance art.
▲ Young artists Marina Abramović and Ulay
The two have amazing talents, their love affair and performance art are closely linked, and the two often explore the love relationship between men and women through artistic performances.
In 1976, "Relationships in Space" became a blockbuster. Marina and Ulay, naked, started 20 meters apart, trotted toward each other, briefly brushed past each other, returned to the same place, and collided more intensely again and again, and half an hour later, Abramovich was knocked to the ground. They use their bodies and performance art to vividly express the ups and downs of emotions between men and women and the differences in their genders. To produce better results when colliding, the sound when the flesh collides is broadcast through the speakers.
In 1977, In The Immeasurable, the duo continued to stand naked at the entrance to a gallery in Bologna, Italy, where the viewer could only enter the museum through the small space between them. The only thing that can be decided for themselves is whether the audience wants to face the nude Ulay or the nude Marina. In life, human beings will not only be affected by various disasters from the natural world, but also hindered by human beings themselves. Just like their mutual relationship, they will be estranged by the intervention of others, making them unable to contact and communicate for a while.
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Chasing freedom, they are uneasy about urban space. After that, they left the apartment, moved into a convertible, and began an artist-style wandering life. They made the "manifesto" of performance art: no fixed place to live; always in motion; direct connections; local connections; self-selection; pushing the limits; challenging risks. Driving a Citroën caravan, they travel to and from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and other European countries, performing art performances and willingly living an ascetic life, and the perennial residence is only a 1.5-meter mattress. To make ends meet, they help the farm family graze at 5 a.m. in exchange for the necessary food, while Marina knits sweaters for herself and Ulay on the trip. In 1980, the two even sold their cars and traveled to Australia to live with indigenous tribes, inspired by nature, to explore more inspiration. This choice also liberates the "potential" of their artistic creation.
This year, they performed Rest Energy at an art exhibition in Dublin, in which the two men balanced each other on either side of the arrow and the arrow, with the poisonous arrow pointing to Abramović's heart. Because the tension of the bow and arrow made their bodies tilt slightly backwards, if they were not careful, the poison arrow would shoot out of the string, and at the same time, what was heard through the megaphone was the sharp acceleration of their hearts. The whole work lasts for four minutes and ten seconds.
▲ Artist Abramovich posted a message on his social media page