Johan Grimonprez | Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
March 11
Join us for a conversation between ACT Professor Judith Barry and ACT Professor Emerita Joan Jonas. Among other things, they will discuss recent and current projects and exhibitions.
Registration is required. This event is free and open to the public.
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’s 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 São Paulo 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; and The Drawing Center, New York. Most recently, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a retrospective of Jonas’s work. 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 2024, she was presented the Nam June Paik prize, awarded to artists who have contributed to the development of contemporary art, mutual understanding, and world peace; and 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.
Judith Barry is an artist and writer whose work combines a number of disciplines including installation and project-based research, architecture/exhibition design, film/video, performance art/dance, sculpture, photography, and digital media.
She has exhibited internationally at such venues as the Berlin Biennale, Venice Biennale(s) of Art/Architecture, Sharjah Biennial, Sao Paolo Biennale, Nagoya Biennale, Carnegie International, Whitney Biennale, Sydney Biennale, and Documenta, among others. Her awards include the Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts 2000 and “Best Pavilion” at the Cairo Biennale, 2001. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient.
Public Fantasy, a collection of Barryʼs essays, was published by the ICA in London (1991).
Other publications include Projections: mise en abyme (1997), the catalogue for The Study for the Mirror and Garden in Granada, Spain (2003) and Body without Limits, Salamanca, Spain (2009).
Her work is included in the collection of MoMA, NYC, Whitney Museum NYC, Generali Foundation, Vienna, MCA, San Diego, Pompidou Center, Paris, Le Caixa, Barcelona, MACBA, Barcelona, FNAC, Paris, Goetz collection, Munich, Frac Lorraine, Metz, and CIFO, Miami among others. A survey of her work traveled in Europe, most recently at Berardo Museum, Lisbon, Portugal in 2010.
Recent exhibitions include “…cairo stories” (2018) and “Imagination, dead imagine” (2017), Mary Boone Gallery NYC, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston, (2018) (solo). ”West By Midwest”, MCA, Chicago, “Art in the Age of the Internet”, ICA Boston and UMMA, Ann Arbor, “Unholding”, Artists Space, NYC, “The Voice”, Coreana Museum, Seoul, “Exhibition as Image”, Ludlow 38, NYC, “Down And To The Left”, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, “Electronic Superhighway” MAAT, Lisbon and Whitechapel, London, “Dis-Play/Re-Play”, Austrian Cultural Forum, NYC, and “Putting Rehearsals to the Test”, VOX Contemporary Image, Montreal (group) among many others.
She has taught and lectured extensively in the USA, Asia and Europe. Full-time teaching positions include ACT at MIT, Cambridge (2002-2003), the Merz. Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany (2003–2005). Currently she is Professor at ACT, and previously served as Director of the program.
Part of the Spring 2025 Lecture Series. This event is presented as part of Artfinity, an Institute-sponsored event celebrating creativity and community at MIT. Artfinity is organized by the Office of the Arts.
