The Neue Nationalgalerie shows Ulay, Ulay & Abramović from 28 November 2026 to 2 May 2027, a retrospective of the German performance artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, 1943–2020). The exhibition ticket costs 12 €, concessions 6 €, or the show is included in the 20 € museum ticket.
The museum has a personal stake. In December 1976 Ulay took Carl Spitzweg's The Poor Poet off the wall here and hung it in a Kreuzberg guest-worker family's living room, filming the whole action as Irritation – There is a Criminal Touch to Art. Our news story on the theft tells it in full. The Berlin painting was later stolen for real and never recovered, so a version on loan from the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee stands in for it.
What you will see
The first part covers Ulay alone: the Polaroid series S'he (1973–74), in which he split himself into male and female personas, and FOTOTOT (1976), photographs designed to fade. The second part follows his twelve years with Marina Abramović, 1976 to 1988, through videos, photographs, sculptures, drawings and letters: Relation in Space, AAA-AAA, Breathing In/Breathing Out, Rest Energy and The Lovers, their walk along the Great Wall of China. Imponderabilia (1977), where visitors pass between two naked performers in a narrow doorway, is performed live every day from 3 to 4.30pm.
Klaus Biesenbach, the museum's director, curated the show with Ricarda Bergmann and Alenka Gregorič of Cukrarna Gallery in Ljubljana.
Good to know
- Dates: 28 November 2026 to 2 May 2027
- Opening: Friday 27 November, 7pm
- Tickets: 12 €, concessions 6 €; museum ticket for all shows 20 €, concessions 10 €
- Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10am–6pm, Thursday until 8pm, closed Monday
- Content note: explicit nudity and depictions of injury and violence. Photographing the performers is not allowed.
- Tours: in German on Sunday 29 November at 3pm, in English on Saturday 5 December at 3pm