The long journey to the end: Marina Abramović’s poetic breakup

Posted On June 2, 2025June 2, 2025

Heartbreak is hell. There is no feeling as gut-wrenching as the split of a romantic partnership, with all the saddest emotions hitting in one fell swoop: grief, anxiety, anger, betrayal. Even if it was totally amicable and the time to part had simply come, there is a bittersweet melancholy in the knowledge that life must change. It’s one of the most universal experiences humans have. To love is to lose, and that fact is undeniable, leading to generation after generation of artists imbuing this complex yet relatable experience into their art. But for Marina Abramović, she decided to make the very act the art.

How do you end a relationship? In instances where things have simply run their course, and there’s a level of ongoing discussion, that’s a big question. How do two people decide how to honour what they had, while also marking the end? Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin coined the term “conscious uncoupling” for that exact experience – a mutual and mature decision to purposefully and respectfully part. That was in 2014. Decades earlier, in 1988, Marina Abramović and her long-term partner and collaborator Ulay did essentially the same thing, turning it into their final performance together.

The collaborations between the two artists are staggering. Together, guided by their connection and their mutual inspirations, they did performances like Rest Energy, an experiment in trust where their perfectly balanced weight kept Abramović from being shot through the heart. They performed Breathing In/Breathing Out, where they breathed in and out of each other’s mouths until they nearly passed out. Most of their projects together found them loosely musing on the topics of love and relationships, as well as the role and ego of the artist.

With a love so deeply tethered to collaboration, it seemed only right that their breakup should be one, too. Their relationship had been played out in a series of artistic performances, so they decided their split would be as well. On March 30th, 1988, they began that performance and the process of their separation when each set off walking from opposing ends of The Great Wall of China.

It would take 90 days to meet in the middle. Initially, when they planned the performance years prior and began the long, drawn-out bureaucratic process of trying to get permission, that mid-point would be where they had married. But during the five years it took to set up, the relationship had broken down. Now, it would be the point that they would separate. 

‘Why?’ is the question from the crowd, but also the question their friends and loved ones asked. The simple answer would just be ‘art’, but there also seems to be a more complex emotional side. On the way to this mid-point, both parties engaged in deep, deep emotional development. Along her way, Abramović met with the oldest person in each village she passed, hearing their stories and gathering local legends. Ulay slept under the stars and saw villagers living in caves. It was a complete and utter removal of themselves from their usual lives and the world their relationship had inhabited. It meant that they could both experience something separate from each other and what they know, perhaps as a way to remove the pain from their normality, or perhaps as a way to mark the end of their grand and artistic relationship in a suitably grand and adventurous way.

So they did the walk, and they met in the middle for one final embrace. Ulay remarked that he would happily walk “forever”, Abramović was desperate to return home, proving they were really on different pages. They said their goodbyes, turned and walked away—the end.

It was the end for three decades until Abramović’s deeply impactful and beloved performance, The Artist is Present. On one of the days when she took up residency at MoMA, sitting silently and staring into the eyes of strangers, Ulay arrived. The video of that moment is heartbreaking, but more so when aware of the story of their long journey goodbye. 

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