Joan Jonas in Singapore | MIT News

First large-scale exhibition in Southeast Asia for pioneering artist and professor emerita

Tom Gearty | School of Architecture and Planning • mit
Feb. 9, 2016 1 minSource

"They Come to Us without a Word," an exhibition by Joan Jonas, MIT professor emerita in the Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT), has opened at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (CCA).

The installation from Jonas — a video and performance pioneer — includes drawings, objects, and videos projected on translucent screens, walls, mirrors, and other surfaces to evoke the fragility of nature and the irreversible impact of human interference on the environmental equilibrium of our planet.

Hailed by The New York Times as “a triumph,” Jonas's installation was organized for the U.S. Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and co-curated by List director Paul Ha. Adapted for the CCA space by Jonas and CCA founding director Ute Meta Bauer, the exhibition in Singapore is the second and only additional scheduled showing of the work. It is the first large-scale exhibition in Singapore and Southeast Asia for Jonas.

Jonas, Ha, and other members of the MIT community, including faculty and alumni, attended the exhibition opening on Jan. 22, with guests of honor U.S. Ambassador to Singapore Kirk W. Wagar and his wife, Crystal Wagar.

"They Come to Us without a Word" will be on view at the CCA through April 3. For more information, visit ntu.ccasingapore.org.

Reprinted with permission of MIT News

Share this article:

Related Articles: