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.
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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
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 by Köln, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Germany
Print run: 1000
November 2025