Ulay, Ulay & Abramović

The exhibition “Ulay, Ulay & Abramović” at the Neue Nationalgalerie brings together videos, photographs, sculptures, and drawings, as well as sketches, letters, and “Imponderabilia,” a groundbreaking live performance by Ulay and Marina Abramović.

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  Ulay / Marina Abramović, Breathing In / Breathing Out, 1978

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  Ulay, S’HE, Auto-Polaroid, 1973–74

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  Ulay, FOTOTOT, Detail, 1976

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  Ulay, IRRITATION – THERE IS A CRIMINAL TOUCH TO ART, Detail, 1976, film stills

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  Ulay / Marina Abramović, AAA-AAA, 1978

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  Ulay / Marina Abramović, Rest Energy, 1980

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  Marina Abramović / Ulay, The Lovers, 1988

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Fifty years ago, on 12 December 1976, Ulay “stole” Carl Spitzweg’s The Poor Poet (1839) from the Neue Nationalgalerie and brought it by car to the home of a migrant family in Kreuzberg. Half a century later, the Neue Nationalgalerie revisits this seminal intervention with the exhibition Ulay, Ulay & Abramović, bringing Ulay’s work back into the museum where one of his most important actions took place.

Ulay is regarded as one of the most important German conceptual artists, yet remains largely unknown to a wider audience in Germany. The exhibition offers an insight into Ulay’s early artistic work, including S’he (1973-1974), a series of intimate self-portraits exploring identity and transformation, and FOTOTOT (1976), in which unfixed photographs gradually disappear when exposed to light. The work forms part of a broader body of experiments that challenge the presumed objectivity, permanence, and evidentiary status of the photographic image, ultimately opening photography toward performance and other forms of artistic action. In addition, the exhibition presents the unique and uncompromising collaboration between Ulay and Marina Abramović over a period of twelve years, from 1976 to 1988.

The Poor Poet Returns

Central work of the exhibition is Ulay’s 1976 action and its film documentation Irritation – There is a Criminal Touch to Art, which questioned the museum as a place of cultural authority and addressed the social realities beyond its walls. By relocating Spitzweg’s iconic work The Poor Poet into the home of a migrant family, Ulay challenged ideas of cultural representation, belonging, and exclusion in 1970s West Berlin. Five decades later, the Neue Nationalgalerie brings the work into dialogue with a version of The Poor Poet, on loan from the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee. Together, they offer an opportunity for renewed reflections on artistic intervention, institutional frameworks, and differently experienced circumstances and environments.

Ulay and Marina Abramović

In 1975, Ulay and Marina Abramović met in Amsterdam and soon formed a close personal and artistic partnership. Between 1976 and 1988, the two artists collaborated on groundbreaking performances in which they used their bodies as a medium to explore questions of identity and institutional boundaries. Their collaboration began with Relation in Space (1976), performed at the 38th Venice Biennale, where they explored physical encounter, repetition, and mutual presence, and culminated in The Lovers (1988), their 90-day journey along the Great Wall of China. Integrating artistic practice into everyday life, they challenged conventional notions of authorship, identity, and artistic production. Their work explored vulnerability, endurance, trust, and interdependence and is considered a milestone in performance art.

The exhibition brings together videos, photographs, sculptures and drawings, as well as sketches and letters, alongside a live performance of Imponderabilia (1977), a seminal performance by Ulay and Marina Abramović in which the artists stood naked facing each other in a narrow entrance, inviting visitors to pass between their bodies. The performance will be presented daily from 3 to 4:30 pm. Together, these works offer insight not only into the performances themselves but also into the processes, discussions, and reflections behind them. They reveal how Ulay and Abramović redefined artistic collaboration and self-representation while challenging established boundaries between authorship, individuality, and the relationship between art and life.

The exhibition is organized by Neue Nationalgalerie on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Ulay’s performance Irritation – There is a Criminal Touch to Art, presented at Neue Nationalgalerie in 1976. The exhibition presents a selection of Ulay’s solo works in the context of this important period of his artistic practice. It also presents selected materials and works from ART VITAL – 12 Years of Ulay / Marina Abramović, originally conceived by Alenka Gregorič and Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein and first presented at Cukrarna Gallery / MGML (30 November 2025–10 May 2026), in collaboration with Lena Pislak – ULAY Foundation and Sydney Fishman – Marina Abramović Archives.

Curatorial Team

Ulay, Ulay & Abramović is curated by Klaus Biesenbach, director of Neue Nationalgalerie, with Ricarda Bergmann, Neue Nationalgalerie, as well as Alenka Gregorič, artistic director of Cukrarna Gallery. Curatorial assistance: Nikola Richolt.

A special exhibition of the Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Runtime: Sat, 28/11/2026 to Sun, 02/05/2027

Takes place here:

• Neue Nationalgalerie

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