ART VITAL exhibition is extended until 10 May 2026

The exhibition ART VITAL – 12 Years of the Ulay / Marina Abramović presents the iconic artistic partnership between Marina Abramović (1946, Belgrade) and Ulay – Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943, Solingen – 2020, Ljubljana). Between 1976 and 1988, the two artists lived and worked together, merging their artistic practice with everyday life and challenging conventional notions of authorship and identity. Their key contributions to the history of performance art tested vulnerability, endurance, and interdependence, reflecting the intense entanglement of shared life and creative process.

For five years, Marina Abramović and Ulay lived and travelled in a Citroën van; without a permanent studio or home, they fully committed themselves to their artistic path. Their collaboration began with the performance Relation in Space (1976), in which they explored endurance, trust, and vulnerability, and reached its culmination in their three-month walk along the Great Wall of China, documented in the film The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (1988).

The exhibition includes videos, photographs, objects from performances, drawings, sketches, letters, as well as documentary and diary materials. Together, these elements shed light on both the public performances and the intimate processes behind them, offering valuable insight into the methods through which Marina Abramović and Ulay explored the body, relationships, and the limits of artistic practice.

Read more about the exhibition >> here. An >> audio guide is also available for the exhibition via QR codes in English; through it, the voice of Marina Abramović leads visitors through the exhibition.