Jonas’s early milestones are captured by the MoMA show: Her first film, Wind (1968), was made on the coldest day of the year on Long Island Sound. She played with perception and audience in Mirror Piece I (1969) and Mirror Piece II (1970), in which a cast of performers carried mirrors as they moved through Jonas’s carefully planned choreography. She bought a Sony Portapak video camera in 1970, which changed everything. Props and found objects, including masks she used to perform as her alter ego Organic Honey—“I didn’t want to be seen as Joan Jones,” the artist told me in her famous no-nonsense tone—are included in the show to great effect.
Jonas, born in New York City in 1936 and a resident of Mercer Street since the mid-’70s, has continued to make boundary-pushing work in the intervening decades. Ahead of her talk with Kennedy, Vogue sat down with Jonas at the National Arts Club to ask about the early days of video, what she thinks of AI, and how she’s maintained her singular, artistic voice. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Vogue: You are in the middle of shows at MoMA and the Drawing Center, you’re still performing, and you’ve been doing public talks, reflecting on your whole career. How are you feeling in this moment? The word longevity comes to mind.
Joan Jonas: I think I’m lucky to have lived so long and have these shows. Everything is a little slower. And your strengths vary, but, you know, I just go from day to day, and basically I enjoy it. And I like all the people that I have contact with. I’m very glad that people are finally seeing my work in New York.
You’ve shown more in Europe. This MoMA retrospective is the first big museum show in your hometown, right?
Yes. It’s great, and exciting. And I have never had a drawing show before. I have about 2,000 drawings—they’re not all great, of course. I’ve incorporated drawing in my performances, and found new ways to make drawings for myself and experimented with certain materials, certain inks, in different mediums.
A lot of the drawings are very colorful, and I felt like there was such a warmth and whimsy to some of them, especially the ones of animals and trees. You’ve included animals and nature in much of your work. What is it about the natural world that keeps drawing you back?