A conceptually innovative take on Jonas’ performances and installations

Published in conjunction with the first major US museum show of Joan Jonas’ art in nearly 15 years, this volume breaks new ground by contextualizing and expanding understandings of Jonas’ body of work through three thematic approaches: the critical notions of gender, being and otherness; the politics of landscape and ecology; and new conceptions of medium specificity and un-specificity. These themes serve as a framework through which to address the rich vocabulary of Jonas’ performances, sculptures, drawings and installations from the early 1970s until today. Inspired by the format of a reader, the monograph presents new writing and scholarship, excerpts from Douglas Crimp’s final interview, as well as a selection of drawings and sketches from Jonas’ notebooks, including never-before-published drawings created during the coronavirus lockdown. Born and based in New York, Joan Jonas (born 1936) has taught at UCLA School of the Arts, in Stuttgart, Germany, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is a professor emerita. She has lived and worked in Greece, Morocco, India, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Poland, Japan, Italy, Hungary and Ireland.