San Francisco Frontiers - Artist Abramovic opens Slovenia show focusing on work with late ex-partner

For the exhibition at Ljubljana's modern art museum Cukrarna, Abramovic allowed curators to access her private archive in the United States and select even the "most intimate" of documents, recordings and pieces that are now on display, she told journalists at the opening.

Known for works that push her body and her audience to extreme limits, the show in Slovenia traces Abramovic's 12-year-long collaboration with her former partner, German polaroid artist Ulay, that began in 1976 when they first met until the time they split.

Visitors can browse through hundreds of videos, photos, sketches of their collaboration that are on display for the first time, as well as diving into private documents such as diary pages and private letters.

"At the time they were not even remotely thinking about changing the course of (modern art) history or becoming a 20th century canon," Alenka Gregoric, co-curator of the exhibition, told AFP.

She and her team spent over two years exploring Abramovic's archives and Ulay's legacy in Ljubljana, where he died in 2020, having unlimited acces to personal documents, audio recordings, drawings, and performance plans never intended to be published.

At Cukrarna's main hall, visitors first see an old black Citroen van that was the couple's "home" from 1976 onwards, when they embarked on what they called a "nomadic life".

"It was uncompromised work, we call this art vital... it was no compromise to any (art) market because we never sold our work, nobody thought of buying it," Abramovic told journalists at the inauguration of the exhibition, adding the time she spent with Ulay was a time "of incredible freedom and incredible poverty".

"Ulay was not an easy human being. He was wonderful, charismatic, interesting, sexy and complicated. Our life was up and down," she said.

After their relationship ended, she said she had to start anew and redefine her work to succeed.

"I never give up," said Abramovic, who was awarded the coveted Praemium Imperiale international arts prize earlier this year.

She called on young artists not to be "afraid of anything or anybody".

The exhibition will officially open to the public on Sunday, the birthday of both Marina and Ulay -- and will be on display until May 2026.

During that time, some of their performances will be reproduced by young artists.

M.Powell--SFF