Joan Jonas: Endless Drawings

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, from1999 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.