A couple walked from opposite ends of China’s Great Wall and met in the middle. Then they broke up

The Great Wall of China has inspired countless works of art in its more than 2,000-year history. Among the most famous is “The Great Wall Walk,” a dramatic 90-day performance that saw lovers Marina Abramović and Frank Uwe Laysiepen (the late German artist known as Ulay) trek towards each other from opposite ends of the landmark.

Abramović began in the east at the so-called “dragon’s head” — where the Great Wall dips into the Bohai Bay like a dragon drinking from the sea — while Ulay started at the “tail,” more than 3,000 miles to her west, in the Gobi Desert.

When the idea was initially conceived, under a full moon in Australia’s outback, the pair had planned to meet and get married in the middle. But obtaining permission from Chinese authorities would take over eight years, by which time their romantic relationship, despite having achieved global fame and success as a performance art duo, had fallen apart amid infidelity, jealousy and a failed threesome. Still, neither wanted to give up on the project and, in March 1988, they embarked on their respective journeys.

“We both decided that we have to address new circumstances, which means our separation… (We would) say goodbye,” Abramović told CNN on a video call from the Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai, where she opens her first ever museum exhibition in China this week. “Great love,” she added, encompasses everything: “Love, hate, disappointment, and forgiveness. We explore all of it.”

The 77-year-old Serbian artist’s new show, “Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy,” features interactive artworks inspired by the Great Wall journey, as well as over 1,200 never-before-seen images taken along the way.

The photos, which will be projected onto the museum’s walls, are divided into four categories that curator and MAM’s artistic director Shai Baitel grouped as “the preparation and beginning walk, encounters with locals, walking the wall and meeting Ulay, and staged experiments and landscapes.”

Baitel said he was “blown away” by the trove of unpublished film negatives Abramović held in storage. “It is a treasure for a curator, for anyone that is in the business of art, or art history research, (to) document (what has) not been digitized yet but exists there in large quantities.”

Abramović is shown traversing through some of the most stunning, wild parts of the wall against a backdrop of mountains, crumbling ruins and varied terrain. There’s a clear sense of isolation — but this loneliness provided space for contemplation and reflection, the artist said, admitting she must have been a “very strange” sight to everyone she encountered.

“I was a woman, walking alone… without a husband, without children, not speaking the language,” she recalled. “What am I doing there?”

Since planning the exhibition and trawling through her photo archive, the artist has been flooded with memories of the support and hospitality she experienced along the way.

“(Local people) were always giving more food… But I couldn’t carry it all. I was given goose eggs, but they are so big, so I would have one in my left pocket and one in my right pocket, to keep balance.”

Abramović was prohibited from camping on the wall, so she instead stayed in small villages along the way. In each one, she would try to meet the oldest resident — some well into their 100s — and through a translator who accompanied her, ask them to share their stories about the wall.

The Great Wall, which stretches across northern China, was built to keep out invaders, but for the locals Abramović spoke to, its winding shape was less about military history and more to do with an earthly representation of dragons and the Milky Way, she said. The quest became as much spiritual as it was physical.

“I realized the old stories are related directly to the minerals that I had been walking on,” the artist said at a press conference in Shanghai. “If I was walking on a ‘black dragon’ that would be on (iron-rich) hematite… a ‘red dragon’ would be clay, it was completely different ground,” she added, explaining that as she walked on various minerals and crystals, she was able to feel different “energies.”

The artist’s expansive Shanghai exhibition offers visitors a chance to hold crystal-based objects, a reference to this aspect of her Great Wall journey. The three-floor show also features “durational” installations — like a custom-built metronome that only takes a beat every 24 seconds, and an interactive artwork that invites visitors to repeatedly, and very slowly, open and close a door without entering or exiting.

“The works are all contemplative and (are intended) to bring you to another state of mind, and to lift your spirit in a certain way,” Abramović told CNN, adding that she is also challenging the way people experience art in the digital age. “(It’s) so much about technological detox. We never spend time with anything, with ourselves. We are going to immediately take a photograph or something before we even experience what it is, and then go home and look at it.”

Three months after they set off, the pair’s paths finally crossed at Shenmu in Shaanxi province. According to Abramović, Ulay had stumbled upon an “unbelievable, meaningful” spot located between two temples and waited for her there. It would take Abramović an additional three days to reach him.

“I wanted to kill him,” she joked. “For me… I absolutely dedicated myself to this concept… you meet in the exact middle, no matter if it is a better photogenic spot or not.

After embracing, the couple parted ways (not before Abramović learned that Ulay had impregnated his Chinese translator during the trip) and did not see each other for another 22 years. That was until 2010, when Ulay surprised Abramović at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during her performance “The Artist is Present,” in which she sat in front of visitors, one at a time, and held their gaze in silence.

“I didn’t know he was going to sit with me,” she said, recalling the moment she opened her eyes to find Ulay across the table. “My whole life went to the front of my eyes and I started crying. It was a very strong moment.” Breaking her own rule, she reached across the table and held his hands, an emotional reunion that went viral.

The pair’s story didn’t end there — six years later, Ulay sued Abramović for works they created together. But although he died in 2020, their relationship had ended peacefully: In a twist of fate, the ex-lovers wound up at the same silent mediation retreat in India.

“You see, the universe has its own ways,” Abramović said, adding that they found space there to truly forgive one another.

“He’s not here anymore; I miss him terribly, because it would have been incredible if he was also here to celebrate this show and this reminder of that epic work.”

“Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy” is showing at MAM Shanghai until February 28, 2025.