Performance Artist – Joan Jonas

Joan Jonas

US Artist- Performance Art, Body Art, Endurance Art

Joan Jonas is a contemporary American artist known for her performance and video work which investigates time, space, and female subjectivity. One of her most famous pieces, Vertical Roll (1972), consists of a repeating image of herself performing. The emphasis on the static and format of the piece rather than the performance itself, acts as an examination of the video medium. “All of my work from maybe 1970 on referred to the feminist movement, but indirectly,” she has explained. “I wasn’t interested in making political art, but from the very beginning I’ve always been interested in how my work relates to the present situation.” Born in New York, NY in 1936, she attended Mount Holyoke College as an undergraduate before going on to receive her MFA from Columbia University in 1965. By the late 1960s, she was fully immersed in the downtown art scene and influenced by the experimental works of John Cage and Claes Oldenburg. During a trip to Japan in 1970, Jonas purchased her first video camera and began filming herself and other performers in non-linear narratives. Over the decades, the artist performed at a number of prestigious venues, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Kitchen in New York. Jonas continues to live and work in New York, NY. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. (ArtNet)

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