Watch out, Marina: Ulay is coming back to New York. Next month, the German artist—who made his name collaborating with Marina Abramovic in the 1980s before their breakup and subsequent legal battle—is due to unveil his first performance in the Big Apple in 30 years.
For the moment, details on the project are scarce. Ulay will collaborate with JAŠA, a fellow performance artist who represented Slovenia at the 2015 Venice Biennale. “The artists and myself do not want to reveal the content of the exhibition until the audience experiences it,” says Mitra Khorasheh, who is organising the exhibition.
The New York performance and installation will be “a series of actions, an intimate happening, an experiential installation… a setting of madness and tranquillity, mockery and admiration,” according to the organisers.
We do know that the performance and installation, titled Cutting Through The Clouds of Myth, will relate in some way to water, which has been a subject of much of Ulay’s recent work. Ulay runs a website called Earth Water Catalogue that invites artists to contribute images, sounds, videos and writings. In 2010, he visited East Jerusalem to help organise an exhibition of art by Israeli and Palestinian students inspired by water. Khorasheh, who is organising the project, is also the curator of New Water Culture, an organisation dedicated to safeguarding the planet’s water. The performance will be a one-time-only collaboration between Ulay and JAŠA.
The exhibition at Kustera Projects in Red Hook, Brooklyn—appropriately, situated just a few blocks from the Upper New York Bay—will kick off during Frieze Week in New York. The performance will last three days (6-8 May), but the installation will remain on show until 1 June.