ART-PRESENTATION: Joan Jonas-Moving Off the Land II

Since the 1960s Joan Jonas has been known for experiments undertaken in areas such as performance, video art and conceptual art which continue to be crucial for the evolution of many contemporary artistic genres. At a time when art was starting to transcend the limits of the gallery space, Jonas created a type of work that combined dance, music and theatre. She soon began to focus on the relation between human beings and the environment, while a defence of the oceans became a recurring theme in her output.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza Archive

The origins of Joan Jonas’ exhibition “Moving Off the Land II” lie in the performance “Moving Off the Land”, which combines literature and mythology with sketches and notes on the sea by the artist. Commissioned in 2016 as a lecture-demonstration by TBA21-Academy the work has evolved to become a true avant-garde action that has been presented in cities such as Vienna, Reykjavik, New York, London, San Francisco and Venice. In the performance, projected underwater images alternate with a voice-over that recites extracts from Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”, Sy Montgomery’s “The Soul of an Octopus” and the essay “Undersea” by the marine biologist Rachael Carson, inviting the viewer to undertake an underwater journey among the drawings created live by Jonas and stage props that give rise to aquatic creatures. In the installation at the Museo Thyssen the videos introduce the five new versions of the installation “My New Theater” created for Ocean Space in Venice, located in the historic church of San Lorenzo; constructions conceived as devices for the visualisation of moving images which Jonas has been making since 1997 in different dimensions and forms. On display are two small wooden structures with a monitor inside and three large installations with projected videos, each devoted to a different subject such as mermaids, mirrors, octopuses, whales and Jamaican fishermen. The film material in the performances is interspersed with new images, including film footage in aquariums and the waters off Jamaica, shots of bioluminescent creatures filmed by the marine biologist and expert in coral reefs and photosynthesis David Gruber, and spoken word sequences and movements recorded in Joan Jonas’s studio in New York. The result is a homage to the oceans and their animal life, to biodiversity and ecology, as well as a wake-up-call on the effects of climate change and species extinction. The exhibition also features a selection of drawings created by the artist in her studio and based on her research on aquariums around the world. Again deriving from one of her artistic actions is a large original drawing of a whale produced in May 2019 at the Ocean Space in Venice, a new centre set up to promote research into oceans and their defence through the arts. This whale greets visitors at the entrance to the exhibition, next to a sound installation with sounds emitted by sperm whales from recordings provided by David Gruber.   The exhibition also includes the sculpture “Aquarium”, a glass box that represents a mountainous underwater landscape and, which like the old cabinets of curiosities that were used for both scientific study and entertainment, displays various marine species. The box was made in Venice by local craftsmen from a design by Joan Jonas that is in turn inspired by a 19th-century postcard.  Around the edge of the installation are Murano glass mirrors which the artist uses to play with the reflection of the works and create a greater sense of spatial depth. A recurring element in Jonas’s work which she has used in her performances since the late1960s, mirrors blur the distance between the work and the viewer, questioning our very view of reality. In the present-day world, in which human activity has speeded up the effects of global warming, these reflections locate visitors as part of an ecosystem, referring to our interdependency with other species.

Info: Curator: Stefanie Hessler, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, Madrid, Duration: 25/2-18/5/20, Days & Hours: Mon 12:00-16:00,  Tue-Fri & Sun 10:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-21:00, www.museothyssen.org