She began as a sculptor, but devoted herself to experimental and conceptual art early on: Joan Jonas (*1936) was one of the first artists to work as a performance and video artist in the late 1960s, mixing both forms. She always dealt with current issues and also incorporated photographs, drawings and installations into her works: »I didn’t see a major difference between a poem, a sculpture, a film, or a dance,« she said in retrospect. Her artistic approach and recurring elements such as the mirror, which makes the audience part of a work and encourages (self-)reflection, underpinned Jonas' leading position in the media of performance and video. For her largest retrospective in the USA to date, she worked closely with the curators and presents older works in new contexts. Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning runs from March 17 to July 6 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the artist's hometown.
The exhibition is complemented by a wealth of archive material that sheds light on the artist's working methods and her collecting and teaching activities. Joan Jonas, who for a long time was much better known in Europe than in her home country – her first major retrospective took place in 1994 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam – was, among other things, Professor of Visual Arts at MIT in Cambridge and previously Professor of Sculpture at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart. Jonas has participated in documenta several times and represented the USA at the Venice Biennale in 2015. She has also received many awards, including the Kyoto Prize in the art category in 2018, which is considered the highest artistic award.
