Joan Jonas: Endless Drawings

25 Sep-1 Nov 2025

PV 25 Sep 2025, 6-8pm

Overview

Drawing has aways been a key component of Joan Jonas’s expansive practice, which also includes video, performance and installation. Following the acclaimed survey of her drawings at The Drawing Center in New York last year, [coinciding with a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art], this exhibition brings together a series of drawings spanning a 20-year period, from 1999 to 2019. The focus here is on her notion of ‘endless drawing’, originally inspired by John Layard's 1937 account of the sand drawings of the indignenous people of Malekula, Vanuatu. Some of the drawings in this exhibition were made during performances by Jonas, the line recording the artist's movement and rhythm, while others were made in the studio and based on recurring motifs in her work such as the knot and the snake.

The drawings are presented alongside two recent video-works made with the Japanese artist Eiko Otake, With the Earth at My Waistline, 2021 and Drawing in Circles, 2023. These works are improvised explorations of space, sound, object, and time. They include examples of endless drawing or mark-making, recalling past moments in Jonas’s practice while also registering her commitment to collaboration.

Joan Jonas was born in 1936 in New York. After studying sculpture, Jonas became interested in dance and considered one of the founders of video and performance art. Exhibitions include Documenta 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 13; the 28th São Paulo Biennial; the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale and the 13th Shanghai Biennale. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at the United States Pavilion for the 56th Edition of the Venice Biennial; Tate Modern, London; Museu Serralves, Porto; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Dia Beacon; Haus der Kunst, Munich and Hamger Bicocca, Milan. Forthcoming exhibitions Joan Jonas: An Island Departure, with Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson at the Farnsworth Art Museum USA (opens 4 October), Echo Delay Reverb at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (opens 22 October) 
Moby Dick - The Whale at Genova Palazzo Ducale (opens 11 October) Joan Jonas: The More-than-Human World at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, Korea (opens 20 November) The Second Nature Taichung Art Museum, Taiwan (opens 13 December)

Eiko Otake was born in 1952 in Japan and moved to New York in 1976. In 1972, she began performing under the duo Eiko & Koma, having performed at museums and festivals around the world. Since 2016, Otake has performed on her own. She teaches interdisciplinary courses at NYU, Wesleyan University, Colorado College and UCLA that implement readings, environmental issues and movement study. She currently lives and works in New York.