In the film, Jonas uses video as a diaristic construct to chart the passing of personal time through quotidian ritual. Over three different periods in New York and Nova Scotia, she videotaped herself every day, briefly addressing the camera upon waking in the morning and before going to bed at...
Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but consistently unequal roles of women. The camera gazes at Jonas, implicating the viewer in the work and further, with her body. Her intentional...
"Shot vertically and intended to be shown on a video monitor turned on its side, the video May Windows (1976) is a component of the Mirage performance and installations, as well as the related installation Cones/May Windows (After Mirage) II (1976/2014). May Windows features two tall white cones,...
In this early work, Jonas translates her performance strategies to video, applying the inherent properties of the medium to her investigations of the self and the body. Jonas performs in a direct, one-on-one confrontation with the viewer, using the immediacy and intimacy of video as conceptual...
Jonas's performance piece, an homage to 18th century French outdoor theater, incorporates mythology as well as spontaneously occurring events into the narrative.
This film was made in the summer of 2006 in Jonas's Nova Scotia home. It reuses the format of a 1976 film in which the artist recorded herself reciting "good night" to the camera before retiring for bed. For Jonas, the repurposing of elements from past films is a strategy that creates a dialogue...
This piece includes many iconographical elements that have evolved in Jonas’s practice since the early 1970s, including the mirror, the hoop and the dog. It epitomises her inventive approach to editing and an illusionistic style characterised by a wry humour. She has described the work as follows:
Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy is based on Jonas' 1972 performance of the same name, the first in which she used video. In an enigmatic ritual of identity, Jonas performs as herself and as her masked double, Organic Honey. Dressed in a feathered headdress and costumes, Organic Honey is the...
Disturbances extends Jonas' investigation of mirrored surfaces and spaces, as she explores reflections of movement and images in water. The tape begins with Jonas, like Narcissus, leaning over a reflecting pool. Throughout this lyrical exercise, the viewer sees only reflected images and inversions,...
"Commissioned by Dokumenta XI in 2002, Jonas' multimedia performance piece Lines in the Sand takes up two works by the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)—Helen in Egypt (1955) and Tribute to Freud (1944)—as source material. Narrated by Jonas, Lines in the Sand transposes H.D.'s re-working of the story...
