Joan Jonas, exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein: Brooklyn Bridge, 1988 © n.b.k. / Jens Ziehe
Curator: Ute Meta Bauer
Joan Jonas (*1936 in New York, lives in New York) began experimenting with multimedia performance and video art in the late 1960s. Today she is regarded as one of the most influential pioneers of these art forms. The new medium of video enabled Jonas to adapt her explorations of sculpture, dance, and theater to a time-based format and to investigate aspects of performance art in unprecedented ways. Jonas combines archetypal and symbolic objects with gestural forms of expression, including mirrors and reflections, masks, and ritualized action. The artist uses these in her own body-based narrative formats, going beyond traditional forms of art and theater. The works presented in this exhibition, which are part of the n.b.k. Video-Forum collection – Left Side Right Side (1972), Vertical Roll (1972), Double Lunar Dogs (1982), Brooklyn Bridge (1988) – reveal her interest in literature, female subjectivity, semiotics, and media reflexivity.
Joan Jonas is Professor Emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She previously taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, and at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. She has participated numerous times in the Documenta (2012, 2002, 1987, 1982, 1977, 1972) and in numerous biennials. Recent retrospectives of her work were shown at Museu Serralves in Porto (2019), and Tate Modern in London (2018). In 2015, Jonas represented the United States of America at the 56th Venice Biennale. In addition to her numerous performances, exhibitions, lectures, and workshops worldwide, surveys of her work have been shown at the Hangar Bicocca in Milan (2014), Queens Museum of Art in New York (2003), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2000), and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1994). Joan Jonas received the first Lifetime Achievement Award of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2009, and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2018.
