Marina Abramović to Revisit Great Wall Walk in Shanghai

Marina Abramović b. 1946, Serbia Follow +

In 1988, Marina Abramović and Ulay became the first foreign artists to traverse the Great Wall of China. The plan began in 1983, when they conceived a performance in which the two lovers would start at either end of the Wall and keep walking until they met somewhere in the middle, where they would marry.

After five years of delays—the project did not compute for Chinese bureaucrats—they set off, Abramović commencing from the Bohai Sea in the east, and Ulay from the Gobi Desert in the west.

After 90 days, having covered roughly 2,000 kilometres each, they met on a stone bridge in Shenmu, Shaanxi province. They embraced and Ulay expressed the hope that they would continue the walk forever. Abramović burst into tears and, instead of getting married, they parted ways. They didn't see one another for 22 years, only reconnecting when Ulay sat down in front of Abramović during her 2010 performance The Artist is Present at MoMA in New York.

Over 1,000 images of Abramović's walk will feature in the exhibition Transforming Energy at the Modern Art Museum (MAM), located on the Pudong side of Shanghai's Huangpu River, from 10 October 2024 to 28 February 2025.

Abramović said, 'I am returning to China with great excitement with this exhibition, which is a result of that experience and includes a new body of work.'

Spread over three floors of the museum, the exhibition will include the artist's 'Transitory Objects' sculptures and new works incorporating crystals gathered from as far as Brazil.

'We invite the audience to immerse itself and participate,' said Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of MAM Shanghai.

'Welcoming this preeminent artist back to China, at MAM Shanghai, with Transforming Energy is appropriate and overdue,' he said.—[O]

Main image: Marina Abramović, Great Wall of China, Landscapes and Portraits (1988). Courtesy the artist.