Catalogue ART VITAL
Exhibition catalogue
The accompanying catalogue of the exhibition ART VITAL – 12 Years of Ulay/Marina Abramović offers comprehensive documentation and a wide range of reflections that illuminate the artists’ radical approach, their shared life, and their political and aesthetic thinking.
In the first set of essays Alenka Gregorič examines how personal documents and audience participation inform an understanding of their work, while Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein reflects on shared authorship, the emergence of a “third energy,” and the ethics of the in-between. Elisabeth von Samsonow discusses the duo’s nomadic, spiritually grounded mode of presence, and Amelia Jones highlights Ulay’s ethical view of art as a lived practice deeply connected to marginalised communities. Bojana Kunst frames their everyday life and vulnerability as the very conditions of their artistic production, and Suzana Milevska reads Imponderabilia (1977) as a radical rethinking of institutional and social boundaries. Diedrich Diederichsen focuses on the specific dynamics of artistic partnerships, showing how collaboration itself becomes an evolving artwork.
A second set of essays further expands this perspective: Sabine Priglinger identifies The Brink (1979) as a turning point toward durational work; Michael Klein offers a personal view shaped by long-standing proximity to the artists; Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas reflects on the meditative and visually charged Polaroid works of the 1980s; Matthieu Lelièvre examines the challenges of preserving performance’s ephemeral legacy; and Kurt Kladler revisits The Lovers (1988) through Ulay’s diary entries. The section concludes with another essay by Thun-Hohenstein, who approaches the archive as a performative field where photographs, objects, and notations continually generate new interpretations.
The essays are accompanied by a wide range of archival material, documents, drawings, contact sheets, and performance photographs.
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Published by
Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana
Represented by Blaž Peršin
Cukrarna Gallery
Poljanski nasip 40
SI–1000 Ljubljana
www.cukrarna.art
Represented by Alenka Gregorič
Editors: Alenka Gregorič, Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein
Co-editor: Alenka Trebušak
Texts:
Diedrich Diederichsen, Alenka Gregorič, Amelia Jones, Kurt Kladler, Michael Klein, Bojana Kunst, Matthieu Lelièvre, Suzana Milevska, Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas, Sabine Priglinger, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein
Slovenian–English translation: Marjana Karer
German–English translation: Margarethe Clausen (texts by Kurt Kladler, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein), James Gussen (text by Diedrich Diederichsen)
English copy-editing and proofreading: Ana Čavić
Design and layout: Ajdin Bašić
Production assistance: Martin Emeršič, Neža Vengust
Project manager, publisher: Nicole Rankers
Photos, video stills, drawings, documents:
Marina Abramović Archives, ULAY Foundation, unless stated otherwise
Repro: Damijan Dolenc / Fotolitodolenc
Lithography: Lösch GmbH & Co.
Printed in Germany
Print run: 1000
November 2025