ARTIST RESEARCH: Marina Abramović - The Lovers, The Great Wall Walk

The Lovers, The Great Wall Walk 1988
1h 5' ,
Collection: Museum Ludwig, Cologne (Germany)
URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaso0j9x098 viewed 14 August 2017

In 1988, Ulay and Abramovic decided to end their relationship and to mark this with a performance, which became the legendary endpoint of their collaboration. After years of negotiations with the Chinese authorities, the artists got the permission to carry out 'The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk', in which they started to walk from different ends of the Chinese Wall in order to meet in the middle and say good-bye to each other. Abramovic started walking at the eastern end of the Wall, at Shan Hai Guan, on the shores of the Yellow Sea, Gulf of Bohai, walking westward. Ulay started at the western end of the Wall, at Jaiyuguan, the south-western periphery of the Gobi Desert, walking eastward. After they both continuously walked for 90 says, they met at Er Lang Shn, in Shen Mu, Shaanxi province. Here, they embraced each other to go on with their life and work separately from then on.
(from youtube description)

After six years of wrestling with the Chinese authorities, the project finally became reality for Ulay/Abramovic in 1988, at a time when they were already living separately and had gone through several years of crisis in their relationship, as they disclosed in an interview with Paul Kokke in 1997. Ulay stressed that in a way, this project was a symbol of a long-term relationship and collaboration that had spanned twelve years, a symbol of a strong magnetic relationship, but also of the end of their road together, for the "Great Wall Walk" was the first that they carried out separately, each of them alone. The Chinese chronicler alludes to this point at the end of the video tape when she asks the open question: "Did they ever truly find each other?"

The original manifestation of their symbiotic relationship, planned as the ultimate encounter, becomes a farewell at the end of the road. The conclusion of Ulay/Abramovic’s joint oeuvre of Performances is not only a symbol reflecting their time together but also the beginning of two new and different paths that they will follow separately and that find their analogy in the hike as a tabula rasa, an inner catharsis for new experiences (Haberer 2015)



Marina Abramović is a Yugoslav performance artist based in New York. Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over three decades, Abramović has been described as the "grandmother of performance art." She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body." (kickass 2016)


Kickass 2016. "Lovers Abramović & Ulay Walk the Length of the Great Wall of China from opposite ends, Meet in the Middle and BreakUp" Accessed 25 September 2017. URL: http://kickasstrips.com/2015/01/lovers-abramovic-ulay-walk-the-length-of-the-great-wall-of-china-from-opposite-ends-meet-in-the-middle-and-breakup/

Haberer, Lilian 2015. "The Lovers, The Great Wall Walk 1988"  Accessed 25 September 2017. URL:http://www.newmedia-art.org/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=ML000044&lg=GBR