”Let’s walk towards each other and let’s say goodbye.” Legendary performance artists and former couple Marina Abramović and Ulay (1943-2020) discuss their final joint performance.
After many years of collaborating in life and art, Marina Abramović and Ulay decided to end their relationship and collaboration in 1988 with one final performance piece: The Great Wall Walk. The two walked the Great Wall of China, one from the East end of the wall, the other from the West, meeting halfway: ”This was probably the most dramatic goodbye,” Marina Abramović says.
“We met one day before, and we didn’t talk. We only said good luck,” Ulay recalls. “Our greatest wish was to walk, to move.” Walking over 2000 km with no prior training took a toll on the body, but “once you get the strength, you understand the beauty of nature,” Marina Abramović says, Ulay agreeing: “I got so in tune with the Earth, with my body, which was a great sensation.”
Finally meeting each other meant closing the chapter of not only their relationship but also working together as artists: “This was so painful, the whole thing,” Abramović explains: “Saying goodbye is saying goodbye to our collaboration work, and you find yourself in a kind of emptiness.” Both went their separate ways: “When we split, it was like a person had died,” Ulay says. The couple famously reunited at Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present at MoMA in 2010.
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, b.1943 – d.2020) was a German artist based in Amsterdam, Holland, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ulay received international recognition for his work as a photographer, mainly in Polaroid, from the late 1960s, and later as a performance artist, including his collaborative performances with Marina Abramović from 1976 to 1988. His work has consistently explored politics, identity, and gender. In 2016, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, held the first major retrospective show of his work, ‘Ulay Life-Sized.’ In 2020, the Stedelijk Museum held the largest-ever and first international posthumous retrospective exhibition of his work, ‘Ulay Was Here.’
Marina Abramović (b. 1946) was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, and is now based in New York. She began her work as a performance artist in the early 1970s and is now regarded as one of the most essential artists in the field. Her work explores the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Her retrospective ‘The Artist is Present’ at MoMA, New York, in 2010 gave her a wide international breakthrough. In 2017, the retrospective exhibition ‘The Cleaner’ was shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, among other places in Europe. Marina Abramović is set to have a significant exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, the first-ever UK exhibition spanning her life’s work.
Marina Abramović and Ulay were interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg in upstate New York at Marina Abramović’s home over ten days in August 2018 for the film ‘No Predicted End.’
Directed, edited, and produced by Kasper Bech Dyg
Camera: Jakob Solbakken
Additional Camera: Kasper Bech Dyg
Music: Simon Dokkedal Sound
Mix: Torsten Larsen
Colour Grading: Klaus Elmer
Graphic Design: Louisiana Design Studio
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
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