Events

Hero to a generation of younger artists, Joan Jonas is a pioneer of performance and video who has pushed the boundaries of art for the last five decades. Experience the largest exhibition of Jonas’s work ever held in the UK. Early works from the late 1960s are shown alongside recent installations dealing with topical themes such as climate change and extinction. You can see her landmark installations including Organic Honey, The Juniper Tree and Reanimation. For the first time at Tate Modern, a single artist’s work is explored in the exhibition galleries, and in film screenings in the Starr Cinema and installations in the Tanks – an experimental exhibition for an experimental artist. Joan Jonas will also perform live alongside other artists as part of the BMW Tate Live Exhibition: Ten Days Six Nights programme. Organised by Tate Modern and Haus der Kunst, Munich​​​​​​​

The most comprehensive exhibition of work dedicated to visionary artist Joan Jonas (b.1936, New York) in Germany to date has been conceived by the artist and Haus der Kunst in collaboration with Tate Modern, London. Characterised by her fundamental interest in cultural rites and the dynamic processes of mirroring, shifting and redefining genre and time, the major retrospective is underpinned by themes that have recurred throughout her career. Environmental issues, echoed in early video works such as “Wind” (1968) are central to multimedia installations “Reanimation” (2010–12) and “Stream or River, Flight or Pattern” (2016), which address climate change and the threat to the ecosystem. The exploration of collective narratives of mythology, fairy tales and fables, set against a backdrop of contemporary, socio-political events form the starting point for works such as “Juniper Tree” (1969), “Volcano Saga” (1985), and “Lines in the Sand” (2002). The masks and props that have accompanied Jonas in her performances over the years are brought together in reference to the theatrical elements of Japanese Noh theatre and Surrealism. Two live performances express her collaborative approach to movement and sound, including “Mirror Piece I/II” (1968/2018), where Jonas introduced the mirror as a central motif to her work to investigate societal images of femininity, and “Working Together: A Lecture Demonstration” (2015), a homage to her twenty-year collaboration with musician Jason Moran.