Joan Jonas

The exhibition presents 11 works, including three large-scale installations. Volcano Saga (1985-89-94-2011), originally presented live and narrated by the artist, is based on an Icelandic story about a woman called Gudrun, who has mysterious dreams and needs someone to interpret them, predicting the future as an oracle. The story is told against the background of Iceland’s supernatural landscapes.

Stream or River: Flight or Pattern (2016-17) is a multimedia installation produced during a workshop given by Joan in Spain together with other artists. The work was first presented at Fundación Botín. During the workshop, Joan explored natural vegetation in the region of Cantabria, northern Spain, where her attention was captured by trees, including centuries-old chestnuts shown in the video. For the first time in her career, she used wallpaper to reproduce a forest full of birds, reflecting on environmental damage and showing a natural landscape that could actually still be there if the conservation of natural resources were a reality.

Lastly, Moving Off the Land II (2019-2020), first shown in Venice last year, also focuses on nature, showing the reality of marine environments. Commissioned by TBA21-Academy (an institution that actively fosters research, expeditions and artistic initiatives having to do with the ocean) and based on three years of research at aquariums around the world, the installation includes video, drawings and sound, emphasizing the ecological and spiritual significance of the oceans for different cultures.

“Joan Jonas’ art has been crucial for the development of many contemporary artistic genres, including performance, video, conceptual art and crossovers into theatre and dance. She has influenced generations of artists, and the presentation of her work to the Brazilian public is long overdue”, says Jochen Volz, Pinacoteca’s general director. Joan Jonas: Five Decades brings a selection of videos showing some of the most important performances created by the artist during her career, such as Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy (1972), Mirage (1976) and Double Lunar Dogs.

The exhibition also presents the series I Know Why They Left (2019) – a set of small, subtle and vibrant drawings based on Jonas’ photographs of animal representations on the collection of Gardner Museum, Boston; and Kites, an installation with 15 hand-made kites using paper, paint and wood.

Catalogue

The show has its own bilingual (Portuguese-English) catalogue presented by Jochen Volz. It includes a critical analysis by curator Berta Sichel and a previously unpublished essay by American conceptual artist Robin Winters. Three other texts will be republished in the original English and have been translated into Portuguese for the first time: two essays by Marina Warner and Gregory Volk and an interview given by the artist to Andrea Lissoni, Julienne Lorz and João Ribas for Jonas’ retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern, London. The publication also includes photographic reproductions and video frames from the artist’s most important works.