A Conversation With Artist Joan Jonas '58

Joan Jonas is Mount Holyoke’s 2018 Leading Woman in the Arts, a short-term residency and lectureship organized by the Weissman Center for Leadership in collaboration with the InterArts Council.

Once called the “Mother of all Performance Art,” Joan Jonas ’58 has used mirrors in her groundbreaking multimedia works since the late 1960s. From early performances captured on 16mm film, to recent installation pieces, Jonas uses the concept of the mirror to show us that images are not facts, but reflections of our individual imaginations and assumptions. Mirror-studded costumes, convex and full-length looking glasses, and the metaphorical mirror of the camera distort our notions of space, subject, object, and audience. This focused exhibition—the first of the artist’s at her alma mater—brings together four mirror-themed works that span Jonas’s prolific career.

The exhibition Promise of the Infinite: Joan Jonas and the Mirror is on view at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum through June 16, 2019.

Learn more: https://artmuseum.mtholyoke.edu/exhib...