There Is a Criminal Touch to Art

Ulay

Frank Uwe Laysiepen, better known under his moniker Ulay, is known for his boundary-pushing performance art practice, most notably the conceptual pieces he performed with his longtime artistic and romantic partner Marina Abramović. Ulay and Abramović worked together for 12 years, and their performances often centered on testing the physical and mental stamina of both partners. Pieces such as Light / Dark (1977), in which they slapped each other repeatedly, or The Lovers (1988), in which the couple walked more than 1,000 miles each from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to meet in the middle, exemplified their extreme approach to their practice and led to the pair becoming icons of performance art. Ulay’s commitment to testing the limits of the body extends to his work as a photographer, with images that largely focus on explorations of identity and the self. He has exhibited in cities across the world, and his works are in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.