Joan Jonas

Joan Jonas

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I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances) 1976 (10)

Jonas intercuts scenes of the Nova Scotia countryside with images of a studio set-up reminiscent of a di Chirico painting. The soundtrack includes both music and spoken excerpts from a journal Jonas kept while travelling in Nova Scotia. I Want to Live in the Country ultimately deals with observation and fantasy, living in the country, and the stifling aspects of the city and one's art.
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Glass Puzzle 1973 (6)

This complex and enigmatic work, which is performed by Jonas and Lois Lane, explores female gestures, poses, the body and narcissism. Mirroring each other with synchronized movements as they perform as alter-egos, Jonas and Lane reference archetypal female gestures and poses from popular and traditional cultures. Throughout the performance, space is dislocated and altered as a formal device — segmented by a swinging bar, superimposed in layers, transformed by subtle changes in light and shadow, or flattened by the video screen. With its evocative personal theater and idiosyncratic vocabulary of gestures, ritual and symbolism, Glass Puzzle is a quintessential Jonas work.
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Vertical Roll 1972 (4)

Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but consistently unequal roles of women. The camera gazes at Jonas, implicating the viewer in the work and further, with her body. Her intentional de-synchronization of the monitor's receiving and transmitting frequencies results in the on-screen image's repeated vertical descent. Creating a sense of fragmentation, the vertical roll relentlessly pounds at the images of the artist as she moves through a series of performed identities. Characterized a "disjunctive self portrait" by the Electronic Arts Intermix, the image content of the work is strongly mediated by the mirror-like function of the camera, scrutinized by the lens and subjected to violence by the vertical roll.
Joan Jonas

Joan Jonas

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Christmas Evil 1980 (5.406)

Garbed in his red suit, Harry, a toy factory worker, decides that the only thing he can do to save the spirit of Christmas is to become Santa Claus himself and make all of the naughty townspeople pay... in blood!
Joan Jonas

Joan Jonas

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Sapphos N/A

Exhibited at the 1973 Whitney Biennial in New York, NY.
Joan Jonas

Joan Jonas

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Nudes with Mirrors 1968

“The idea of the double runs through my work,” observes Jonas. Inspired by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges whose writing imagined that mirrors could open up alternate worlds and possibilities, Jonas began to use reflective surfaces to fragment images, flatten perspective, and double figures and environments. At once a technological device and a theatrical prop, these mirrors allowed the artist to, in her words, “alter the audience’s experience of the space.” [Overview courtesy of MoMA]
Joan Jonas

Joan Jonas

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Beautiful Dog N/A

From the Joan Jonas Video Channel