The Joan Jonas Knowledge Base

ARTIST ARCHIVES INITIATIVE

Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994 Details

· ·

Description
Exhibition Materials
Catalogue
Press Materials
Exhibition Team
Related Events
Interviews

Description

Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994, curated by Dorine Mignot, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, May 31–June 19, 1994.

Joan Jonas’s 1994 retrospective Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, cemented her position as a key performance and video artist of her generation. As one her first retrospectives outside of the United States, the show highlighted the artist’s popularity in Europe in the 1990s—especially in the Netherlands and Italy—where she would continue to work late into her career. Jonas and Stedelijk curator Dorine Mignot worked in close curatorial collaboration to organize the retrospective around a selection of the artist’s pieces that most accurately represented her practice of drawing on various mediums. Aiming to translate a selection of her live performances into installations, she and Mignot chose appropriate video and audiotapes, as well as selections of props, drawings, costumes, and slides for each gallery. 

Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994 featured elements from some of the artist’s earliest works, such as Mirror Pieces (1968–1970), Nova Scotia Beach Dance (1971), and Choreomania (1971), alongside Variations on a Scene (1990), as part of the installation Mirror Pieces and Outdoor Pieces (1968/1994). The exhibition also included Mirage (1976/1994) and Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy / Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll (1972/1994), the latter of which was ultimately acquired by the museum and remains in the Stedelijk’s collection. More recent works included Volcano Saga (1985/1994), Jonas’s film project initiated by de Appel Amsterdam, and Revolted by the thought of known places…Sweeney Astray (1994), for which Jonas worked closely with the Toneelgroep Amsterdam theatre company, both deploying and subverting traditional theatrical conventions. Following the installation of this work in the Stedelijk retrospective, copies of props and videos from the piece were used in the performance’s premiere at the Holland Festival, the largest performing arts festival in the Netherlands. As is typical of Jonas’s other iterative works, the theatrical installation of Sweeney Astray would take a multitude of forms in future presentations. 

A relatively early survey of Jonas’s career, Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994 presented many of her works in their earliest iterative forms, which the artist herself directed and installed in collaboration with Mignot. Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy / Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll (1972/1994), most notably, was presented in one of its most complete manifestations, laying vital groundwork for future iterations of the work. The artist and curator’s presentation of this and other works in the Stedelijk exhibition facilitated Jonas’s subsequent translation and transmission of multiple performances into museum and gallery installations. 

Many of Jonas’s early collaborators, including Electronic Arts Intermix in New York City, where Jonas was based, contributed to planning the retrospective exhibition and its catalogue. The collective nature of the retrospective’s organizing efforts allowed for a number of individuals and institutions to speak to Jonas’s relevance and importance. The exhibition catalogue features an array of these voices, ranging from Rudi Fuchs, Director of the Stedelijk Museum at the time who penned the introduction, arts educator and institutional leader Bruce Ferguson, and Jonas’s artistic contemporary Simone Forti. Following the trajectory of the artist’s popularity in Europe, international interest in Jonas’s work continued to grow. She would go on to present works at the Queens Museum, the Tate Modern, and the Venice Biennale’s American Pavilion, and her work maintained a strong presence in the rest of the world as well, including Southeast Asia. 

This early presentation’s curatorial fingerprints can be found in many subsequent presentations and retrospectives, which are indebted to the meticulous research and highly collaborative structure that made the Stedelijk exhibition possible. As a female artist working across various media, Jonas’s work made for a risky, yet rewarding and promising, institutional endeavor at the Stedelijk in 1994. 

—AD

Bibliographic References

See Exhibition Materials, Catalogue, Press Materials, and Bibliography for further reading.

Exhibition Materials

Checklists

  • “Installations.” In Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994, edited by Dorine Mignot, 116–119. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1994. 

Prop and Equipment Lists

Catalogue

  • Dorine Mignot, ed. Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1994. Texts by Alvin Curran, Bruce Ferguson, Simone Forti, Rudi Fuchs, Mary Heilmann, Joan Jonas, Dorine Mignot, Susan Rothenberg, Richard Serra, Kees Veelenturf, Alice Weiner, Lawrence Weiner, and Robin Winters.

Press Materials

Exhibition Team

Dorine Mignot (Curator, Exhibition Concept / Exhibition Organization / Catalogue Editor)
Rita Kersting (Exhibition Organization / Catalogue Editing)
Victoria Walsh (Exhibition Organization / Catalogue Editing)
Lex Reitsma, Haarlem (Catalogue Design)
Seth Jansen, Amsterdam (Typesetting)
Evertsen Reproservices bv, Hoofddorp (Lithography)
Scan Studio bv, Heemstede (Lithography)
Snoeck Ducaju & Zoon nv, Gent (Printing)
Tonny Daalder, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Production)
Lex Reitsma, Haarlem (Production)
Stephen Vitiello (Technician)

Related Events

  • Joan Jonas, Revolted by the thought of known places…Sweeney Astray (1994), Machinegebouw Westergasfabriekterrein, Amsterdam, May 31, 1994 (premiere performance)

Interviews

Accessibility
Site Map

All works by Joan Jonas © 2021 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.