Ben Luke talks to Joan Jonas about her influences—together with these from the worlds of literature, movie, music and, after all, artwork—and the cultural experiences which have formed her life and work.
Joan Jonas’s Transferring Off the Land (2019), Ocean Area, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice. Efficiency with Ikue Mori and Francesco Migliaccio. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy.
Picture: Moira Ricci © Joan Jonas
Jonas, who was born in 1936 in New York and nonetheless lives within the metropolis immediately, is among the most important and pioneering artists within the historical past of video and efficiency. She attracts inspiration from a wealth of cultures and traditions, alluding to every part from fairy tales to historic myths, scientific research and artwork historical past, and brings them collectively in multidisciplinary installations involving dwell motion, drawing, spoken phrase, music, sound and video.
Joan Jonas: Transferring Off the Land, Edited by Ute Meta Bauer. Co-published by TBA21–Academy and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.
Picture: Enrico Fiorese
She discusses her early curiosity in Minoan tradition and Renaissance depictions of house, life-changing visits to Japan and Iceland, and writers as various as Jorge Luis Borges, Halldór Laxness, and Susan Howe. Plus, she provides insights into her studio life and has a stirring reply to the final word query: what’s artwork for?
Joan Jonas’s Transferring Off the Land (2019) Ocean Area, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice. Efficiency with Ikue Mori and Francesco Migliaccio. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy.
Picture Moira Ricci © Joan Jonas
• Joan Jonas: Transferring off the Land, Walther König, 272 pp, €25.
• Drawing in Circles, with Eiko Otake, Castelli Gallery, New York, 14 March-1 April; Joan Jonas, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, till 26 February; Joan Jonas, Dia Artwork Basis, Beacon, NY, US, till 13 March.
Physique drawing from Joan Jonas’s Transferring off the Land III efficiency (2020)
Courtesy of the artist
• Her retrospective on the Museum of Trendy Artwork, New York, opens in spring 2024.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the humanities and tradition app.
The free app provides entry to an enormous vary of worldwide cultural organisations by means of a single obtain, with new guides being added recurrently. They embrace a number of US non-profit areas the place Joan Jonas has had solo exhibits or made performances, from PS1 in New York Metropolis, to the MIT Listing Visible Arts Middle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Dia Artwork Basis’s outpost in Beacon, New York. When you obtain the app, you’ll discover that the Dia Beacon information includes a six-minute video by which Joan Jonas speaks concerning the three works in her present present on the basis, together with The Form, the Scent, the Really feel of Issues, which was commissioned as a efficiency for Dia Beacon in 2004 and now reappears there as a large-scale multimedia set up.
