Joan Jonas: "Vertical Roll" (1972). image copyright Joan Jonas, courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago

Joan Jonas (USA *1936)

Joan Jonas is a pioneer of performance art. She developed her own style of combining film, video, drawing and movement. A major theme in her work is exploring how real and illusionary space can be realized, experienced, permeated and fragmented.

In the well-known early tape "Vertical Roll", Jonas manipulates the grammar of the camera to create the sense of a grossly disturbed physical space. The space functions as a metaphor for the unstable identity of the costumed and masked female figure roaming the screen, negotiating the rolling barrier of the screen's bottom edge.