ULAY WAS HERE

The Stedelijk Museum presents ULAY WAS HERE, the largest-ever retrospective of Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943–2020), known as Ulay, and the first international posthumous exhibition, including many never before seen works. While Ulay’s work with Marina Abramović is iconic, ULAY WAS HERE shows his impressive solo oeuvre as a pioneer of Polaroid photography and performance and body art: experimental and uncompromising.

Ulay’s complex artistic expression is rooted in photography. He developed a novel approach in both method and subject matter, using the camera to investigate his identity while exploring socially constructed issues of gender. Over time, Ulay’s handling of photography became increasingly performative. His own body became the medium, even to the point of endangering himself. His groundbreaking performances with Abramović had this same intensity and confrontational power. In Ulay’s later performances, his body remained the object of research.

Comprising approximately 200 works, ULAY WAS HERE encompasses four key themes: performance and the performative aspects of photography; (gender) identity and the body as a medium; engagement with social and political issues; and his relationship with Amsterdam, where Ulay lived for four decades. The exhibition includes photographs, Polaroids (from small to life-size), Polagrams, sculptures, projections, and documentary material. One gallery is reserved for a three-part project by de Appel arts center, which was co-founded by Ulay in 1975.

Stedelijk Director Rein Wolfs: “With its rich history and deep expertise in performance and time-based media art, the Stedelijk is the perfect museum for this exhibition. To strengthen this, the Stedelijk recently acquired Ulay’s seminal work Irritation, There Is a Criminal Touch to Art (1976), the registration of him stealing Spitzweg’s painting The Poor Poet from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and installing it in the home of an immigrant Turkish family. Central to the exhibition, it marks the end of his initial solo career before stepping into the twelve-year collaboration with Marina Abramović.”

On its YouTube channel, the Stedelijk presents several online tours of ULAY WAS HERE. The first tour with Rein Wolfs is already online: please click here. Tours with curator Hripsimé Visser, Hana Ostan Ožbolt of the ULAY Foundation, son Jurriaan Löwensteyn and Marina Abramović will follow in the upcoming weeks.

Coming up:

Surinamese School
December 12, 2020–May 31, 2021
Surinamese School celebrates 35 artists with over 100 works of art created between 1910 and the mid-1980s, highlighting different themes and narratives at the heart of 20th-century Surinamese painting.

Small World Real World
December 12, 2020–February 21, 2021
The Stedelijk’s Gallery of Honor hosts a thematic exhibition marking the museum’s 125 year anniversary, a guideline for future approaches to the collection presentation and acquisition policy. With works by Malevich, Etel Adnan, El Anatsui, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Remy Jungerman, Don Yaw Kwaning, Yulia Tsvetkova, Willem de Rooij, Abdoulaye Konaté, and Klara Lidén.

Charlotte Prodger: SAF05
January 24–April 25, 2021
This video installation by Turner Prize laureate Charlotte Prodger (1974), named after a maned lioness, is a compelling autobiographic document dealing with subjectivity, self-determination, and queerness.

Bruce Nauman
March 27–August 15, 2021
A large-scale survey of Bruce Nauman (1941) spanning over 50 years, this first comprehensive retrospective of the American artist in the Netherlands is a non-chronological journey through his multifaceted oeuvre featuring over forty works, including large audio and video installations.

Transformation. New Collection Presentation
Opens June 2021 / autumn 2021 / 2022
The Stedelijk transitions towards a fresh, dynamic, and thematic collection presentation reflective of today’s society, offering greater scope to focus on the latest developments in modern and contemporary art and design while exploring diversity and dialogue. The revitalized presentation will appear in three parts.

Kirchner and Nolde
Expressionism. Colonialism.
July 10–October 17, 2021
The Stedelijk highlights the oeuvres of Expressionist artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde in a new examination of the relationship between their art and the colonial reality of the time in which they lived.

For more information and press materials, please contact pressoffice [​at​] stedelijk.nl.

ULAY WAS HERE is curated by Hripsimé Visser and Rein Wolfs, in collaboration with Hana Ostan Ožbolt (ULAY Foundation) and Maria Rus Bojan. The exhibition is generously supported by Fonds 21 the Mondriaan Fund, Stedelijk Museum Fund, Goethe-Institut, and Profilex framers.