Born in the USA in 1936

Joan Jonas, an acclaimed multimedia performance artist, is also a pioneering figure in video art. Her influential works of the 1970s were distinguished by the incorporation of video and video monitors into live performances to generate layers of metaphor. In her earliest videos or in her later theatrical performance narratives, Jonas articulates her ever elusive portrait of female identity through her own vocabulary of ritualised objects and gestures. Jonas uses personal devices to create rich textures of meaning, including the use of masks and masquerade, the incorporation of drawing, and the layering of mirrors and mirror images.

Joan Jonas was born in 1936 in New York, where she lives. She has given numerous performances and exhibitions of her work all over the world. Winner of countless awards, she has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Queens Museum of Art, New York; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and the Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart. He has also been present in major performances and solo exhibitions at Dia:Beacon, New York; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York; Kunstmuseum, Bern; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and San Francisco Museum of Art, among many other institutions.