A pioneering figure in video and performance art, Joan Jonas has spent over five decades shaping the contours of contemporary practice. Born in New York in 1936 and trained as a sculptor, she emerged in the 1960s amid the city’s avant-garde scene, where artists, dancers and musicians collaborated to redefine creative boundaries. Her multidisciplinary approach spans installation, drawing and video, and has often been inspired by mythology, nature and Japanese theatre traditions.
Until June 28, Pace Tokyo is hosting ‘Joan Jonas: Drawings, Curated by Adam Pendleton’, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. Curated by one of Jonas’s long-time friends and peers, the show highlights the centrality of drawing in her work and her deep artistic relationship with Japan. It brings together around 80 works on paper, spanning from the 1970s to the 2010s, including delicate rabbit drawings referencing the Japanese moon myth, gestural ‘body drawings’ on traditional Japanese paper, and intricate studies of fish and birds.
