In Conversation with Joan Jonas
- This event has passed.
August 24 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Inverness County Centre For The Arts
16080 Nova Scotia Trunk 19
Inverness, NS B0E 1N0
Join us in Inverness, Cape Breton for an engaging conversation with internationally acclaimed artist Joan Jonas.
Discover the stories behind her powerful exhibition We come from the sea, delve into her work in video and performance art, and hear reflections on her life living between New York City and Cape Breton. Joan will be joined by David Diviney, Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, for this special event.
Admission is free, and no registration is required.
About the Artist
Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York, NY) is a world-renowned artist whose work encompasses a wide range of media including video, performance, installation, sound, text, and sculpture. Jonas’ experiments and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s continue to be crucial to the development of many contemporary art genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theatre. Since 1968, her practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of rituals, and the authority of objects and gestures.
Jonas has exhibited and performed extensively around the world. Her notable exhibition history includes Documenta 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 13; the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial; the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale; and the 13th Shanghai Biennale. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at the United States Pavilion for the 56th Edition of the Venice Biennial; Tate Modern, London; Museu Serralves, Porto; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Dia Beacon; Haus der Kunst, Munich; The Drawing Center, New York, Gladstone Gallery, New York and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Naples, Italy. The Museum of
Modern Art in New York hosted a retrospective of Jonas’s work in 2024.
Jonas is the recipient of many awards including The Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon (2016); the Maya Deren Award given by the American Film Institute (1989); and the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2009). In 2018, Jonas was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize, given to those individuals who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind, and in 2024 she was presented with the Nam June Paik Prize, awarded to artists who have contributed to the development of contemporary art, mutual understanding, and world peace. In 2025, Jonas was selected as a medalist in the inaugural Art Basel Awards and received their distinguished Icon Award.
Image: Moving Off the Land II, Untitled, 2019 © Joan Jonas / ARS New York / CARCC Ottawa 2025.