Duet

Joan Jonas is a pioneer in video and performance art. Her productions from the 1960s and 1970s have contributed to defining these modern art forms. Throughout her career, she has pursued her explorations of the relationship between performance and new media. Jonas studied art history and sculpture, and among her sources of inspiration are Japanese theatre forms such as Noh and Kabuki. “Duet” is an early video performance, in which the artist sings a duet with herself. Face to face with her own recorded image, Jonas studies and confronts the video as a mirror and a reality, in an exploration of the self and identity that recurs profusely in her videos and in her subsequent text-based works.