Thunder cracks, kites are frozen in the wind overhead, giant drawings of birds line the walls and videos show performers dancing in forests. This is Joan Jonas world, a thriving maelstrom of sound, movement and vision, cut through with myth that’s indistinguishable from reality. Since the 1960s, the American artist has been pioneering performance and installation art and influencing countless artists in the process.
The show kicks off with props and masks alongside photos and videos of early performances. These are rooms full of choreography, sensuality and experimentation. She uses mirrors to redirect the gaze and rearrange space, she uses masks to twist reality.
A massive installation in the next room riffs on the Trojan War, stabbing narrative knives into the idea of a woman kicking off the dispute. Jonas draws lines between domestic quibbles and war, between legend and fact. But this is more of a set than an installation – it was originally designed as a stage for Jonas to perform on, now it has been roped off as a historical document, an afterthought. And that’s sort of the problem with the whole show.
Jonas says herself in the first room: ‘the prop in my work is usually not a piece of sculpture in itself’ – her props and stages generate movement in a performer, they are activated only by being used. Showing them is post-fact.
The exception is down in the tanks. Here, finally, the sensation, emotion and aesthetics of the installation and film (one recent, the other one of her earliest pieces) she has created match up to the intentions of the initial performance. There are crystals and mountains, mirrors and dancing, fear of ecological destruction. It feels powerful, absorbing.
But you can’t help but feel like most of these works are the leftovers of art, they’re what you end up with after the performance which you never got to see. As a result, most of this feels like an exhibition about art, rather than of art. These are the crumbs of a delicious meal someone else got to eat, and you’re left with your stomach rumbling.
NB: A program of live art - BMW Tate Live: Ten Days, Six Nights – accompanies this exhibition Mar 16-25, many of the performances are free.
